Last Friday, we reported on the rather mysterious and lack of transparency surrounding the pilots for reopening theatres and museums. The questions we raised in that article couples are now partially answered thanks to the efforts of three contributors to Follow The Money (FTM), and the answers they found are not reassuring.
Just a recap: in January, the minister announced a pilot of quick tests for reopening museums, events and theatres. That pilot turns out to be set up completely outside the direct control of the Ministries of Health and Welfare and OCW by a private foundation that is not an ANBI, and therefore does not have to disclose records.
Emergency procedure
This would have been done to make the process quick. A public tender, which would be logical for any other project with a billion euros at stake, would take too much time. To FTM, however, Pieter Kuypers, professor of European and national procurement law at Radboud University Nijmegen, explains that emergency procedures exist precisely in such cases, which the government even used last year.
That haste is necessary seems logical. Society is kind of on the brink and some form of rapid testing will be necessary as long as the whole world is not yet vaccinated. So experience has to be gained. This is happening very fast now, even as it is still completely unclear who will eventually have to pay if after the pilot the testing society becomes the norm. The €75 per test currently charged to private individuals cannot possibly be paid by theatre or concertgoers, let alone museums or festivals.
Employers
It is therefore perhaps logical that the government is at a distance. Indeed, the driving force behind the whole operation appears to be employer umbrella organisation VNO-NCW. The only person involved who wanted to talk to FTM confirms this. David van Hartskamp, ceo of Lead Healthcare, says that the Open Netherlands Foundation, of which former military man Tom Middendorp is boss, was co-founded by VNO-NCW. However, statutes are not public, making it difficult to verify.
Piquant detail is that Lead Healthcare has not yet seen a penny of the millions needed to set up the rapid test lanes. The company has so far advanced that money itself.
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