Transport Minister-designate will clear air on Frontiers airport coronavirus testing contract - Okoe-Boye

Former Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Bernard Okoe-Boye says clarity on the controversial coronavirus testing contract awarded to Frontiers Healthcare Solution Services Limited will be brought to bear during the vetting of the nominee for the Ministry of Transport.

As part of President Akufo-Addo’s restructuring of ministries for his second term government, the aviation sector has been placed under the Ministry of Transport which the nominee, Kwaku Ofori Asiamah will have oversight responsibility on.

According to Mr Okoe-Boye, the minister-designate has adequately been briefed on the contract and is in the position to share details being demanded by Parliament’s Appointment Committee when he appears before it for vetting.

Frontiers Healthcare Solution Services Limited was contracted to undertake COVID-19 testing at the Kotoka International Airport and details of the contract have become a major topic in the ongoing ministerial vetting.

So far officials of the previous government who have been renominated into the new government for appointment have indicated their ignorance of the contract details when they appeared before the committee.

Such persons include the former Health Minister Kwaku Agyeman Manu, who told the committee that he was not privy to the contract details.

With questions still being asked on who superficially knows anything about the contract, the former Deputy Health Minister in an interview with Citi TV monitored by GhanaWeb said questions on the matter have been directed to persons without first-hand information on the matter and that the vetting of the Transport Minister-designate will bring matters 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 a 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 said on Point of View.

The services of Frontiers was procured by the government of Ghana following the decision to reopen the Kotoka International Airport in September 2020.

However, the Minority side of Parliament has on several occasions raised concerns of procurement breaches about the deal and have been demanding documents to verify whether due diligence was done in the contract awarded to the company which is said at a point have been operating without license.

Mr Oko Boye in the interview averred that claims of procumbent infractions around the contract must be rejected since the company is already delivering to its mandate.

“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.