Former Deputy Minister of Health, Dr. Bernard Oko Boye says the nominee for the Transport Ministry will settle the controversial matters surrounding government’s COVID-19 testing arrangement with Frontiers Healthcare Solution Services Limited.
The Minister-designate, Kwaku Ofori Asiamah, who will be having oversight responsibility of the Aviation sector following the collapse of that Ministry has received adequate briefing on the contract and will make it known should he appear before Parliament’s Appointment Committee, according to Dr. Oko Boye.
One of the major issues that have taken centre stage in the ongoing vetting of ministerial appointees is how Frontiers Healthcare Solution Services Limited was awarded the contract to provide COVID-19 testing services at the Kotoka International Airport with some nominees not in the know.
However, on Wednesday’s edition of Citi TV’s ‘The Point of View‘ programme, the outgone deputy Health Minister clarified that questions to the answers being sought have been directed at persons without any first-hand information on the deal and that only Mr. Asiamah’s vetting will bring the boiling issues to rest.
“I am reliably informed that the Transport Minister [nominee] who now supervises the Ghana Airport Company Limited has been sufficiently briefed.”
“If you pose the question to about 10 to 50 ministers who are not having direct supervisory role over the contract, they will not know. So the fact that people are coming from Foreign Affairs and Justice doesn’t mean they know. Kofi Ada who was the [Aviation] sector minister will know about this contract”, Dr. Okoe Boye told host, Bernard Koku Avle.
The government engaged Frontiers Healthcare Solution Services Limited to conduct rapid COVID-19 tests following the reopening of the airport to international passenger flights in September 2020.
But the Minority wing in Parliament continues to raise red flags and concerns of procurement breaches about the deal, demanding documents to ascertain whether diligence was done.
The company was at a point said to be operating whilst unlicensed.
For Dr. Oko Boye, Frontiers Limited is already doing a good job and that claims the company was not selected through appropriate means must be rejected.
“Frontiers is the only firm that has developed the technology to test and identify the virus in less than an hour. It’s a point of delivery technology which has been designed especially for airports. So it is the solution they bring and there is a cost to it”, he justified.
Source: citinewsroom
