UPND STINKS CRIMINALITY…we’ll expose every criminal around $100m contract, warns Nakacinda
By Kombe Chimpinde Mataka
PF chairperson for information and publicity Raphael Nakacinda says the alleged bribe scandal surrounding the US $100 million scandal is just a tip of an iceberg of criminality going on in the UPND government.
“So that $100 million scandal is just a tip of the iceberg. There is more going on in this government. It stinks with criminality,” he says.
Meanwhile, TFM business associate in Zambia Jim Belemu has referred all queries on the controversial contract to the company in South Africa.
In a letter to their local representative Dr Belemu dated 15 May 2022, TFM Holdings chairman Mcebisi Nlozi raised concerns on the alleged request for facilitation fees on contract MOH/SP/W/005/20.
This is the tender for the proposed construction and equipping of seven “No. X 150 bed capacity infectious diseases isolation hospitals in Zambia”.
“Dr Jim, we write to you to place on record that we have been approached by representatives of the Minister of Health to arrange facilitation fees and a vehicle for her. We are for obvious reasons very uncomfortable with this and wish to task you to place this on record in Zambia. Thank you very much for your assistance,” wrote Nlozi.
Commenting on the letter, Nakacinda told The Mast that the revelations by TFM Holdings, a South African company which was contracted to construct some prefabricated hospitals in Southern, Western and North Western provinces, implicates “everybody including the President”.
“All these revelations that are coming in we would want them authenticated. It is just that in Zambia there are very few people who have the courage to state the truth as it is for fear of either being victimised or intimidated. But you see the potency of truth is that regardless of the intimidation you face at the end of the day the truth will eventually prevail,” Nakacinda said. “The scandal of that $100 million is one that implicates everybody including the President. So to that effect the PS (permanent secretary Dr George Magwende) that was fired was just a sacrificial lamb. Actually, he was attempting to do the right thing and to that effect, it created discomfort to the powers that be
and that is how he was sacrificed but there is more revelation coming around. This whole scandal including a predetermined move to have the cancelled contract challenged so that there could be compensation. And compensations will only still go to meet the same needs or still go in the same pockets of those that had earlier attempted to benefit if the contract went through. So it is both ways. Tt is a catch 22 situation. Whether the contact is cancelled, they will still orchestrate a challenge so that they can then be compensated and through that compensation, they will still get the same money they were going to get if the contract had gone through – a scheme of dealers finding ways of raising money out of these things.”
Nakacinda said the UPND was deceitful on a number of issues.
“That’s UPND for you. It thrives on deceit. On that contract itself they said something else on the floor of Parliament and they
are doing another thing. Look at the firing of police officers – the list of 54 officers came out that they were to be fired in national
interest. When we exposed it, they opposed and said it was not genuine, it was fake but just one month down the line the same list of
people have been fired,” he noted. “So when we talk about that $100 million scandal, our binoculars has been zooming directly so that we expose every criminal around that contract. …Gilbert Phiri who they want to take to the DPP office, who is a personal lawyer to the President, will never have the guts to investigate the corruption of UPND.”
Nakacinda claimed that the UPND had resorted to interfering with state institutions.
“Look at the fertiliser scandals. Now we are getting to learn that even the Auditor General’s report when it was initially presented to the President, there is information that it was doctored and edited to remove some of the very critical information that would have exposed corruption and theft of pubic funds around the fertilizer deal…what is happening now is that even watchdog institutions are being interfered with, the same way they are interfering with ECZ (Electoral Commission of Zambia) and everybody,” he charged. “These institutions that are supposed to operate independently are now paralysed. So that $100 million scandal is just a tip of the iceberg. There is more going on in this government. It stinks with criminality.”
Nakacinda was one of the people that raised alarm over the $100 million at the time the contract was approved by the Ministry
of Justice, Attorney General, the Ministry of Health and the Zambia Public Procurement Authority (ZPPA).
Efforts to get a comment from health minister Sylvia Masebo failed as her mobile phone went unanswered and messages remained unattended to.