In June 2020, Chinese Billionaire Jack Ma sent a fresh batch of donations containing test kits, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to Kenya.
The consignment disappeared in typical Kenyan fashion.
On Wednesday, detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations raided a privately-owned medical supplies firm in Nairobi where they found some yet-to-be verified kits being sold.
According to online sources, Goodman Agencies Limited, located at Goodman Plaza on Waiyaki Way in Westlands, Nairobi, was established in Kenya in 1991 and registered under the Companies Act as a privately owned company specialized in importing, exporting, sales & marketing and distribution of pharmaceutical products and surgical equipment.
Since the first batch of donations of testing kits and PPEs from Jack Ma came to Kenya in late March (past 20th), Kenyans have been questioning why not more than 3000 are tested oer day yet the kits were more than 25,000.
It was curious how private medical facilities i.e. Lancet and Nairobi Hospital were the ones testing a few weeks later, but not for free, but at a fee.
At first Lancet announced a fee of Sh17,000 which reduced to Sh10,000; the next week after that Nairobi Hospital also began testing for Covid-19 at a fee of Sh10,000.
Coronapreneurs
Kenya has a govt owned medical supplies agencies, the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (KEMSA) headed by former Nakuru County Health Official Dr. Jonah Manjari.
Online chats point a figure on Dr. Manjari’s incompetence.
It is better at this point to try to dissect the faceless guys behind the scandal involving making profit from the coronavirus crisis.
Kenya, having witnessed run-away corruption and looting of public funds over the past 6 years have grown suspicious of their government.
It comes not as a surprise that the Ministry of Health (MoH) is one of the most corrupt and by definition heartless ministries in GoK.
There are many actors in the ‘game’, working day and night to profit from ‘fighting covid-19’.
In this analysis, even Goodman Agencies might come in as a victim of competition or a fall-out within the circle of hyenas.
Just how did the Pharmacy & Poisons Board (PPB) licensed company acquire COVID-19 test kits?
Afya House Cartels, KEMSA and the Kenyan National Chambers of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI) officials have been accused of colluding to benefit from the fight against the pandemic.
It’s a numbers game
Since mid March 2020, after the first case of COVID-19 was detected in a Kenyan, the govt’s numbers have been increasing. However, that increase has been more aggressive towards the third curfew and cessation of movement announcement.
On 18th June, 2020, they announced 213 new Covid-19 cases out of a record sample of 6,024 people that were tested.
Why the huge number? The huge number was followed by an announcement, which most Kenyans missed, that the MoH had run out of kits for testing truck drivers along Gilgil weighbridge in Nakuru.
What was the government hiding in announcing a huge testing, just after the DCI raid at Goodman Agencies Ltd? Or better still, was the cartel/coronapreneurs trying to play PR with the public?
The government has been haphazard in its reporting of the total number tested, but by jumping from a mere 2000 people to 6000 in a day, then going back to the usual 2000 raises eyebrows. Are these test numbers even real?
Or has KEMSA, the biggest cartel of the coronapreneurs turned its back on Richard Ngatia of KNCCI and needed a distraction by blaming the Goodman Agencies, so that they can send DCI to take test kits from a ‘rival’ coronapreneur for free.
Fact is, Kenyans have questioned where the donations from Jack Ma and his foundation disappear to immediately it lands.
There’s an axis of evil individuals running influential firms that hijack the donations, they then sell to private entities, thereby making enormous profits.
Kenya cannot handle a full-blown SARS-COV2 crisis and as such, the cartels, who are already used to making money by scamming the govt are ‘making hay while the sun shines’.
Preparing to make a kill
It is alleged that as the COVID-19 crisis was ravaging China, in early January, KNCCI Chairman Richard Ngatia used his access to high-level international intelligence that is available to the Kenyan Presidency, to import a lot of the testing kits and PPEs that would be critical, before the lockdown of airspace around the World.
At first while were were still struggling to understand the virus, people like Ngatia were already prepared to ‘sell the kits back to the public at a profit’, to ‘make a killing’.
Remember that the Nairobi Hospital and Lancet were charging exorbitantly, but that talk has died down, however, tests are are still ongoing, albeit under confusion as the mainstream media is not reporting anything.
The plan for opening is that a county must have at least 300 beds dedicated to handling COVID-19 patients. Ngatia through KEMSA has in excess of 5,000 critical care beds waiting to pounce on this opportunity, as long as counties are releasing to counties that are willing to pay cash for them
It is evident, they wouldn’t want any competition.
The cartels at the ministry of health love such arrangements because it is an avenue for making money through kickbacks. A country hooked to Private-Public Partneships (PPP).
Mombasa County Government under Ali Hassan Joho also went PPP, they procured such beds through a Private-public partnership.
On the frontlines, doctors and other critical staff have not received any personal protectives equipment (PPEs) from KEMSA despite constant claims that this equipment is readily available and clear evidence that they have been donated to the Government through KEMSA.
So we continue to wonder, why hasn’t the Ministry of Health ensured that these beds and PPEs arrive at all county hospitals in Kenya in anticipation of the spike in infections and hospitalizations?
Are counties supposed to pay the same way the did, the highly f*cked up Managed Equipment Service project (MES)?
