By Shamoba
PRIVATISATION TALK: ZAMBIANS ARE NOT FOOLISH
Our six-year-old son has a medical condition which requires that he be on Sodium Valproate, a prescription drug that is used to treat epilepsy and bipolar disorder.
He has been taking this drug every morning and night of every day since early 2018.
While Sodium Valproate is effective in preventing seizures, it does not cure and we have since been advised to seek traditional remedies.
The first time our son had a seizure was in early 2017.
One morning, around 04:00 hours, we heard him scream and go into convulsions as he stiffened and his eyes rolled.
We had never witnessed anything like that before.
It was not a pleasant sight.
We thought we had lost him.
Only those who have been through this harrowing experience can relate.
After undergoing a brain scan at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH), he was diagnosed to have an epileptic condition which, if left unchecked, can lead to brain damage.
Since early, 2018, he has been taking Sodium Valproate.
However, the UTH, which has been dispensing this drug to us, has not had it in stock.
Well, as late as two weeks ago.
Half a year without the drug!
I hear there are many other essential drugs like insulin that have run out of stock.
Consequently, we have had to fend for ourselves by buying the drug from pharmacies.
Now, there are families out there that are financially worse off than us.
How are they coping?
How are they managing their children’s conditions?
This is the question that our “listening” government should be grappling with.
But are they?
Instead, they have sought to distract our attention by bringing up a useless excuse of privatization.
They want us to believe that the lack of drugs in our health facilities is due to the privatization of state owned-enterprises that took place over 20 years ago.
Every government minister and Patriotic Front official has made privatization a mantra at every meeting or rally.
How so insulting!
If, as they desperately want us to believe, there was any impropriety that could have taken place that time, that is not our interest.
What we want to focus on is the criminality that is taking place now and contributing to the lack of drugs that our children so desperately need for their survival.
As they say, he who feels it knows it.
I have a son with a medical condition and I, therefore, know it.
If anyone doesn’t feel the way I do, they can blindly join the fray of this this privatization balderdash, play it safe or, better still, remain in the comfort zone.
What we need are immediate answers to the criminality that took place in the acquisition of 42 fire trucks whose price was pegged at US$1 million dollars each and yet the initial price was a paltry US$250, 000.
Who pocketed the other US$750, 0000?
Multiply this by 42, it gives you US$31.5 million.
Where did this money go?
There was also a report by the Centre for International Forest Research which revealed that while the Zambian government had declared a meagre US$900,000 in the export of mukula logs to China in 2016, that country had, instead, imported US$87 million of the logs.
Who pocketed the rest of the money?
For me, this criminality is the cause of the drug shortage and other difficulties we are going through and, therefore, a good reason for a commission of inquiry.
The life of my son is more important than any temporary benefits that can be accrued from being a cheerleader of embarrassingly-political privatization propaganda which the government thinks will advantage them.
My advice to my government is that they should focus on real and present issues.
But can they?
They think the Zambian citizens are foolish and will sheepishly buy into their cheap privatization rue.
We are not foolish.