Donors withheld $17million at Ministry of Health-Elijah Muchima
…President Hichilema must authorise the ACC to publicly release the names of Ministers under probe…
Amb. Emmanuel Mwamba wrote;
The Minister of Health Hon. Dr. Elijah Muchima has disclosed that donors withheld a collasal amount of $17million for purchase of medicines due to suspected acts of corruption at the Ministry.
This revelation is serious and is extremley worrying and action must be taken against the corrupt.
Corruption cannot be fought in silence or in secrecy. Details of Ministers under criminal investigations must be disclosed for the sake of transparency and accountability.
For example, the septic wound at the Ministry of Health, was allowed to fester for too long without action and clearly caused unkown nimber of loss of lives and institutional damage.
First, there has been a persistent lack of medicines, medical supplies and laboratory reagents. Further, Hospital equipment and diagnosis machines are broken down.
Despite the persistent shortages and loss of lives occasioned by lack of drugs, the previous Minister refused to buy medicines from current suppliers and manufacterers, repeatedly and publicly called them “an indian cartel”.
She also blamed doctors,nurses and pharmacists of being behind the critical shortage of drugs as they were another pilfering ring!
Then the corruption directly involving the Minister regarding the tender of the construction of the infectious disease hospital and the $70million purchase of drugs from Egypt, broke out. There was no action against her.
Further when the scandal of the 61 trucks carrying medicines worth $25million marooned at a yard in Makeni in Lusaka for seven months, the Minister thought by her usual blame-game of bureaucracy and the so-called indian cartels and passing the buck elsewhere, she would, once again escape scrutiny and accountability.
Since 2022, the Cancer Diseases Hospital has broken down and literally lie in a state of disuse. Currently 800 patients are in need of urgent chemotherapy and radio therapy and government can only evacuate to India about 20 patients per cycle -funding permitting!
Sometimes deaths as high as 10 patients are recorded per week from among those patiently waiting for their turn to be flown to India for treatment.
Secretary to Treasury, Felix Nkulukusa announced that the Ministry of Health receives priority attention and funding.
This troubled stakeholders. How can a Ministry receiving increased allocated budget funding suffer such crises and shortages?
The budget allocation for 2021 was K9.2 Billion and it was increased to K12,4 billion in 2022 representing 35% increment.
In 2023, the total budget for Ministry of Health was K16.1 billion, representing a percentage increment of 30%, out of which K14.7 billion was from GRZ and K1.3 billion from Cooperating Partners.
Followingbthe recruitment of 11,200 new health workers, the Personal Emolument budget was allocated K7.7 billion while the Non-Personal Emolument had a total budget of K8.4 billion which is inclusive of K1.3 billion from Cooperating Partners through their direct budget support.
It is also important to note that several donors provide off-budget support.
But despite this, the country has also suffered big disease oubreaks such as Cholera, dysentery, anthrax, syphilis as systems of diseases surveillance, prevention of outbreaks and epidemics have collapsed.
Previously, President Hichilema fired Permanent Secretaries, but the operational matters became worse and the corruption perception rose.
The ACC Deputy Director General Monica Chipanta-Mwansa confirmed that the Commission was investigating some Cabinet Ministers and senior government officials for corruption.
President Hichilema has protected the names of the suspected culprits, and todate,have not been publicly named.
Now we have learnt that cooperating partners withheld funding to the Ministry of Health.
The culprits that caused this crisis remain free, unaffected and the damage and loss of lives occasioned is treated as merely a by-the-way issue as Government continues to pretend to be fighting corruption!
