Whatsup News has seen a disturbing video of distressed Ghanaians travellers at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) who have been detained for being unable to cough up the ridiculous US$150 being charged each arriving traveller to Ghana for COVID-19 testing.
The video which has gone viral shows a four-month-old baby forced to sleep on the bare benches at the arrival lounge of the airport after its parents could not pay the controversial amount to get them and their baby tested.
According to the amateur photographer who catalogued the predicament of these stranded Ghanaian travellers, they demanded airport authorities to quarantine them since they cannot pay for the test, but officials reportedly told them that the government cannot pay for their quarantine and that they must remain at the airport indefinitely.
At the time of the video, the passengers claim they were on the verge of spending two days sleeping on the airport benches instead of reuniting with their family and friends they journeyed to visit.
The Akufo Addo administration has been accused of unduly using a COVID-19 excuse to exploit international travellers to Ghana, by requiring them to squeeze out some US$ 150 each for a cheap COVID-19 Antigen test, the third-highest fee in the world.
Investigations have revealed that the company responsible for the test, Frontier Health Services Limited is owned by Nigerian fugitive Billionaire, Benedict Peters,
Incidentally, Mr. Peters is well-known to President Akufo Addo, and the circumstances to which he secured the contract to slap US$ 150 on each COVID test has come under serious scrutiny in Ghana.
To begin with, Frontier Health Services is owned 100% by Healthcare Solutions Limited, a company which is, in turn, owned 100% by The Peters Family Company Limited, an opaque company registered in the notorious Caribbean Island tax haven called Dominica.
Curiously, Professor William Kwabena Ampofo, the point man at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) who facilitated the entire deal, is a cousin to President Akufo Addo.
Professor Ampofo is the Coordinator of the National Laboratory for COVID 19 Testing at Noguchi. This publication has obtained an August 27, 2020 letter addressed to Prof. Ampofo, from Frontier Healthcare Services “requesting for COVID-19 testing support at Kotoka International Airport”. The letter was signed by Dr. Emmanuel Acquaye, a Director at Frontier Healthcare Services.
In the letter, Frontier which was registered less than a month previously, (July 21, 2020) was requesting Prof. Ampofo’s support to carry out their “Novel and first of its kind worldwide” COVID-19 test on international travellers arriving Kotoka Airport.
So far, civil society groups such as IMANI Africa have warned that the test has not even been subjected to mandatory standardisation protocols as required by Ghanaians laws. Essentially, the test may well be a scam due to the fact of its secret endorsement and also the fact that it is an antigen test of a mere 50% accuracy rate.
