General dealers
Written by Editor

We do not take any pleasure in exposing the rot that is going on in our country. It is painful and it hurts to see our country being raped and our people left destitute. Governments, whatever their ideology, exist to deliver services to the people. This is the most important duty that any government is called upon to do.

To do this, those in government need a clear plan. Apart from a plan, there is need for a determined commitment to honesty and integrity in service. Where integrity is compromised, governments become self-serving and the people suffer.

This is what seems to be going on in our country today. We have a government that seems more interested in itself and its hold on power than the suffering and pain that the majority of our people are experiencing today.

We say this because there is definitely a pattern emerging in the way that Rupiah Banda and his friends are running this country. They seem to be operating like general dealers. It is very difficult to see what interest they are serving in most of the decisions they are making today. Everything seems to have been reduced to deals made in dark corners. Demands for transparency and accountability amount to insults, according to Rupiah and his friends. They expect all of us to keep quiet when we see things going wrong. They want us to politely tell them that what they are doing is wrong when they are rudely and an unashamedly engaged in behaviour that is wrong.

Even if Rupiah instructs the Secretary to the Cabinet Joshua Kanganja to co-operate with the law enforcement agencies, nothing much will be achieved unless there is a dramatic change in the way that Rupiah is running things. There is something wrong with the attitude that Rupiah has brought to town. The interest in procurement seems anything but innocent.

There is so much going on in our country today that we couldn’t possibly publish everything. Some of the rumours that are flying are so scaring that if they are true, one wonders whether we will have a country left when these friends of ours are done with us.

Many of our people are poor, uneducated, hungry and unhealthy.

With this state of affairs, one would expect that the government would devote its energy to trying to find ways of reversing the suffering of our people. They should be spending time thinking and planning how they are going to achieve this. The government should be putting pressure on the technocrats that are employed at huge expense to help them tackle the many challenges that we face as a country.

As a government, Rupiah and his friends should be coming up with clear policy solutions to the many problems that our country faces. But this is not what is happening. Rupiah and his friends don’t seem interested in thinking, planning and formulating policies that will take our country out of the quagmire that it finds itself in. They do not seem at all bothered about the future of the country.

This is what makes us unhappy. It makes us sad. Almost every other day, there is a scandal to report about Rupiah’s government. Where are we headed to?

The interest that Rupiah and his government have in procurements for the government is not innocent. There is too much that raises questions. The pattern that is emerging must worry every well-meaning Zambian. We cannot have a government running a country like they are a group of general dealers or commodity merchants.

There is more to running a country than just buying things from China. Just the other day, this newspaper exposed the government’s attempt to buy mobile hospitals from China at what looked like very exorbitant prices. No one would argue against the provision of medical services to our people. We all know the challenges that we are facing with medical care. Our medical system is in a very poor state.

If we thought that the government wanted to provide better medical service, we would applaud them and not denounce them. We have been denouncing the government because these deals do not seem intended to address the needs of our people. It is clear that there is somebody benefiting and it is not our people.

We say this because the Ministry of Health should have priorities. What services do our people really need? We still spend huge amounts of money evacuating people for medical treatment outside the country. The reason we are given is that we do not have the equipment to do some of the diagnostic work that is required in some of these cases. Surely, this is a priority. We need to have medical facilities in our country that should stop us from sending people outside the country for routine check ups.

We all know that many of our people even, in Lusaka, have got problems accessing medical services. If you go to some of the clinics in places like Chawama or Chipata compound, you will find that our people have no access to basic drugs. And even doctors are not easily accessible. On most occasions, they go home with a prescription asking them to buy drugs they cannot afford.

Most, if not all the districts in our country, have hospitals but the problem is they do not have equipment. They struggle to get personnel and medicines are difficult to come by. Surely, this is a priority - providing medicines, medical personnel and equipment for these hospitals.

We are saying this to demonstrate that these Chinese solutions do not seem to be designed to deal with the real problems of our people. This is why today we are being treated to another terrible joke.

When most of our people cannot access medical facilities because of poor road infrastructure and a lack of transport, the government in its wisdom has seen it fit to buy them hearses from China, again.

With all the challenges that our people are facing when accessing medical facilities, is buying hearses – bakatenga malilo – the best response? We know that everybody deserves a decent burial. But the government’s behaviour on this issue is insensitive. Again, it is very clear that this purchase has nothing to do with helping the people. Somebody else, not the people, is benefiting.

What are we saying? Is it wrong for the government to provide medical services to the people? No. Is it wrong for the government to provide funeral transportation? The answer is no.

Then what is wrong? It is clear to anyone who has been following what is happening that Rupiah and his friends have decided that it is boring to be a policy formulator. They want to be policy implementers.

The problem with this approach is that there does not seem to be any policy. It seems Rupiah and his friends are waiting for vendors to come to their office and tell them they are selling this or that. After that, they sit and decide that ‘we want nine mobile hospitals or 100 hearses’. Is this the way to run government?

But this seems to be the way Rupiah is running things. Just a few months ago, this newspaper told the nation that Rupiah and his friends wanted to sell Zamtel in circumstances that were not clear. During the same period, they also attempted to buy radar equipment through single sourcing from a company called Selex. When they were challenged, Rupiah and his friends said, in the case of RP Capital and the sale of Zamtel it was RP Capital who approached them. In the case of Selex, again they said Selex had offered to supply the radar equipment.

Public procurement is about transparency. This is not what is happening in Rupiah’s government. It seems Rupiah wants procurement to be controlled by ministers and not the technocrats who are employed to deal with it. This is certainly fertile ground for corruption and abuse of office. This is what explains why there have been so many cases of questionable procurement decisions since Rupiah came to power.

Rupiah must not reduce himself and his government to being buyers and procurement officers. The problems that our nation is facing are more complex than that. Buying hearses for people who need medicines is an insult to the suffering of our people. Rupiah and his friends can do better than that.

Unless Rupiah and his friends stop being policy implementers and start designing policies that will drive the country out of the miseries that we are in, the instruction to Kanganja is empty rhetoric and nothing more.