Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Member of Parliament for North Tongu, has claimed that Frontiers Healthcare Services Limited, the company hired by the government to provide mandatory coronavirus testing at the Kotoka International Airport, has made a staggering profit of US$130 million (GHS984.7 million) in the last 18 months.
Until President Akufo-Addo terminated the mandatory Covid-19 test regime at the airport on Sunday, March 27, 2022, any Ghanaian returning to the nation had to pay $50 for the test, while foreigners had to pay $150.
The Minority in parliament, including former President John Dramani Mahama, recently called on the government to scrap the compulsory testing, describing it as an “extortionist scheme”.
Mr Ablakwa, in a Facebook post, alleged that Frontiers Healthcare Services Ltd was awarded the contract after the company was hurriedly put up in less than two months.
He noted that “the majority of Ghanaian companies doing legitimate business for decades have never seen that kind of balance sheet in their entire corporate life.”
“Per the unpatriotic nepotistic agreement, the Ghana Airport Company which belongs to all 30.8million Ghanaians made a paltry US$8 million. Don’t be surprised, therefore, that Ghana Airport cannot pay their electricity bills,” he added.
He stressed that Frontiers and a “few nation-wrecking cronies they are fronting for”, have made an “inhumane booty of US$130million from a pandemic which claimed countless lives.”
“Imagine how GHS1billion could have transformed our foremost institutions whose scientists sacrificed greatly to fight the pandemic — I am referring to the globally acclaimed: Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, the National Public Health and Reference Lab, Korle-Bu and the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP),” he bemoaned adding that “we are, quite clearly, our own enemies.”
