Maravi

There are no nomads in Zambia

There are no nomads in Zambia
Written by Editor

Modern man can’t live without health care. Every citizen of our country should have access to medical services. There is no future development without healthy citizens. And no one can claim to uphold the sanctity of life if there is no provision for minimal health care for all. Life is sacred, a gift from God to be valued from the moment of conception until death. This being the case, it is the duty of our government to ensure that all Zambians have reasonable access to health care.

Looked at this way, one would start to think the government’s decision to borrow US $53 million and spend it on containers that are mounted on some chassis to be tolled around the country may be a good thing, maybe in line with our desire to have every citizen access medical services. But it is not.

As the Zambia Medical Association president Swebby Macha has interestingly observed, such hospitals are certainly not suitable for our stable communities. Many Zambians may today be living in isolated hamlets but they are not nomads wondering from one place to another. They live in stable communities that don’t shift from one place to another every day or so often. These communities obviously need medical care but not the type that is being proposed by Rupiah Banda and his friends. We agree with Dr Macha, there is something wrong with what is going on.
Can anyone honestly say that the problem that they have with medical care in Zambia is the lack of hospitals to necessitate the acquisition of these mobile hospitals? It seems the decision to buy these mobile hospitals was not made with Zambian health care in mind. There is something else that the people that are pushing this transaction have in mind. This is not about medical care, this is about eating, it is about commissions. Somebody somewhere is benefitting from all this. This seems to be the trend in Rupiah’s government. Nothing seems to be done with the people in mind. It is always who is going to benefit. This is what explains the interest that Rupiah and his friends have in Zambia Public Procurement Authority.

We would all commend Rupiah if we thought that buying nine containers at US $53 million was meant to benefit the people. If the driving force behind this purchase was a thought-out medical plan that would give every Zambian living in a remote area access to medical care, there would be nothing to condemn. But this is not the case. This transaction stinks, it does not make sense. One of the major challenges that we have as a country is road infrastructure. On a regular basis, one government minister or the other is talking about the need to improve the infrastructure. Poor road networks have been identified as one of the reasons why doing business in Zambia is expensive. This same problem of poor roads has led many interested parties to demand the improvement of railway services to improve communication and transportation of goods and services. Can Rupiah tell us how he is going to utilise road transport vehicles to provide medical care in the remote parts of this country. With the price tag that is attached to the concept of the container, we will be forgiven for expecting that the government is trying to buy very high-tech equipment. If they are buying such equipment, how is it going to survive the rigors of moving on our rural roads a lot of which are in desperate need of attention?

From what the Zambia Medical Association is saying, every district in our country has a hospital which was put up at a great expense to taxpayers. Why is the government not channeling resources to upgrade these hospitals and thereby be able to reach more people? Why is the government embarking on a project that is fraught with disaster right from the outset? It is clear that somebody wants to benefit at the expense of our people.

The agreements that are being entered into include spending US $5.2 million on Chinese experts over a two-year period. The question is: if the government has this kind of money to spend on Chinese doctors, why not spend it on Zambian doctors and other experts? We know that medical professionals of all kinds have provided the mainstay of medical care in much of the Southern African region for quite a long time. Our own Zambian doctors, nurses and technicians have left our hospitals to work in neighbouring countries and even further afield. Why not spend such money attracting these experts to come back home?

How are these mobile hospitals going to coordinate with the district hospitals? Who is going to be in charge of these container hospitals? From what is being agreed, it seems Rupiah and his friends want to roll out a Chinese medical structure parallel to our own medical structures. If we know anything about management, this is a recipe for disaster. This plan cannot work. And we have no doubt that those pushing this scheme know that it won’t work. But they are still pushing it, nevertheless. Why? It is simply because there are benefits for them in it.

This deal of mobile container hospitals is not different from that of the Chinese scanners that Rupiah pushed on borders that don’t need them. Why push for such deals that are simply going to drain the national treasury? And this is not also different from the RP Capital Partners Limited deal. Need we say more? It is also not different from the GMO maize Rupiah wanted Zambians to eat.

Looking at any one of these transactions in isolation, one may be forgiven if they thought these are ordinary government transactions. The confusion that may surround one or the other deal is simply a matter of mistake or oversight. But you cannot have so many mistakes, so many deals that don’t make sense. There is a pattern here. There is a method to this madness. Somebody somewhere is sitting to plot how they are going to eat government money, how they are going to enrich themselves through government funds. And the end result is so many contracts that don’t make any economic sense.

This is what explains the interest that this government has in ZPPA, in procurement. There is a very high interest at the highest level of this government in procurement. But they should realise that the country has changed. All these deals will just land them in more problems because Zambians will not take it. Zambians are becoming more alert, more vigilant by the day.

Rupiah and his friends should not think that they are more clever than everybody else. This is what landed Frederick Chiluba in problems. Chiluba wanted to control everything. He had even moved the tender board to State House. Just like Rupiah’s government, single sourcing became the preferred mode of government procurement. It became rare to see government tenders being floated in the newspapers. Everything was being done secretively and behind closed doors. Where has this landed Chiluba today? Chiluba and his tandem of thieves tried to hide behind security for everything they did. They were able to run for a long time but they’ve not been able to hide.

Rupiah and his friends seem to want to play the same game. Everything must be procured secretly, by single sourcing. A tribunal that ended recently heard how people wanted to buy a radar by single sourcing. And now Zamtel is being evaluated for possible partial privatisation by single sourcing. This is not all. The construction of the Kasumbalesa border post is being done by single sourcing. This pattern is not encouraging. It does not give any confidence that Rupiah and his friends are interested in good governance. Transparency and accountability is an inconvenience to them.

Against this background, we have no choice but to condemn the attempt to purchase nine container hospitals from China for each provincial centre. This transaction does not look like a transaction being led by medical professionals. It looks like Kashiwa Bulaya’s purchase of some food supplements from Bulgaria for the treatment of HIV and AIDS. Bulaya’s purchase of those supplements had nothing to do with medical care for the millions of our people who are unfortunately infected with HIV. It was a scheme to make money for himself and his friends. This is what has landed Bulaya in jail. This is what is happening in our country today.

Our hospitals require all the resources they can get to attend to the multitudes of our people who need care today. The government should not play around with people’s lives. Playing around with resources, buying containers from China in the name of providing medical care is an insult to the people and the government should stop this. As Dr Macha has correctly observed, the project the government wants to embark on may work for nomadic people but we do not have any nomadic people in our country.

Even for nomadic people, these containers would still not do. Some of these things seem like bad jokes because it is difficult to accept that a serious government can sit and plot to do such things. What is more disconcerting is that this is not the last scandal we are going to hear from this government. They are busy, they are looking for deals. This is wrong and should be fought with all the tenacity the Zambian people of goodwill can marshal.

Labels: CORRUPTION, HEALTHCARE

posted by MrK @ 2:41 PM