Maravi

Destruction of evidence

Destruction of evidence
Written by Editor

There was a licence for corruption, for abuse in the Ministry of Health. And it will not be easy to investigate and successfully prosecute wrongdoers in that ministry because things are very deep-rooted and involve too many people. It is not by accident that well connected people working in that ministry are much better off than other public workers.

The simple explanation for this is that there has been too much unearned income going into individuals’ pockets in that ministry. But again the question is: how has this been possible? It is simply because those in charge of government have been abusing this ministry, using these same people, these same officers.

We shouldn’t forget that it is the Ministry of Health that was used in 2001 to siphon money from government and fund Levy Mwanawasa’s campaign. And it was Ministry of Health staff that were at the centre of diverting government resources to Levy and the MMD’s campaign.

This opened the floodgates. It was free for all and it became very difficult for anyone to have full control of what was going on in that ministry. When convict Kashiwa Bulaya was permanent secretary of that ministry, he was untouchable. He was only answerable to Frederick Chiluba. Nobody could touch him or question what he was doing. Why was this? It was simply because Bulaya had special assignments. This practice did not end with the Chiluba regime.

It continued under the Levy regime. Dr Simon Miti, the permanent secretary of that ministry, had special access to the president and other state agencies. Dr Miti had a lot of power because he moved too many things. Why? It is simply because he was running a ministry that was doing a lot of things for those in power. And invariably, where things are done in this way, accountability is somehow somewhere lost. Things only come to surface much later when the chain breaks. It cannot be denied that last year, this same Ministry of Health was abused in the campaign for Rupiah Banda. Ministry of Health resources were channelled to Rupiah’s campaign. And who was doing all this? It is these same Ministry of Health staff who were moving things to aid Rupiah’s campaign. If they can steal public resources for Levy’s campaign, for Rupiah’s campaign and for all sorts of things for others, why can’t they steal for themselves?

The truth is that that whole ministry is rotten. But it is also true that it is not the only rotten ministry. The whole government system is reeking with corruption in every pore. This is a government whose business is designed for the benefit of individuals’ pockets. Workshops are arranged for the simple purpose of benefitting individuals. This is the government whose president confessed to have benefitted greatly from travel allowances. Clearly showing that foreign trips are designed to put money into people’s pockets, including the president so that he can have money to spend on girlfriends, including buying them houses. We are not inventing this. It all came from the mouth of a former president of this country trying to explain the source of his money.

We have no doubt the Ministry of Works and Supply is equally rotten. If one was to critically scrutinise every contract that has been awarded for this or that work, all the flies in this country would die from the stench of corruption.

So there are so many people in this country whose only discernible source of income is crooked deals with government. And this is what is causing a lot of problems because government is no longer much at the service of its people but it’s now a vehicle for those who are well connected and well positioned to enrich themselves.

What has been unearthed so far at the Ministry of Health is nothing but a tip of the iceberg. And people shouldn’t get too excited about it because it’s really nothing when compared to what is still under the carpet. Those who are investigating these matters need to do so with level heads. The excessive politicisation of their investigations will not yield much. It may even make them lose some of these cases they are taking before court because politics is creeping too much into their work, and shoddy jobs are being done.

The destruction of documents to destroy the audit trail should have been expected because there was a lot of collusion in what was going on in that ministry. It’s not simply a Kapoko issue. The corruption in that ministry goes far beyond the case of Kapoko. Those who have been arrested are far much fewer than those who have stolen but are still lying safe in that ministry. We wish the investigators success in their work. But we don’t think their work will yield much other than a few sensational headlines in the media. We say this because the corruption that rocked that ministry is too deep, too extensive and involves too many people. We also don’t believe the Auditor General’s office has the capacity to undertake the work required unless they suspend everything else for the next two years and simply concentrate on the Ministry of Health. Even then, they will still meet a lot of challenges.

There is a lot of collusion in the stealing of public funds in Zambia. And as we have seen in the cases before our courts of law, sometimes this collusion has involved the highest echelons of power – the presidency. We have also seen that even law enforcement agencies have been part of this collusion. We even have a case where even the Auditor General’s office became part of the scam. And even members of the judiciary were not spared in these schemes. This country lost a chief justice because of corruption, because of a desire by our people to live on unearned income. We could have lost more judicial officers if care had not been taken to put a stop somewhere.

Where there are such high levels of collusion, controls – no matter how sophisticated and elaborate they may be – become useless. Government money will still be stolen in all sorts of ways. Dubious contracts will be awarded to members of the ring. There is very little government business in this country that is clean. Very few government contracts in this country are straightforward. And the art of stealing public funds in this country is being perfected by the day. It is very difficult to detect that something here or there is not right.

The only thing that shows up all the time is the poor quality of work or service that the public gets from these contracts. It will be impossible to develop this country if we don’t change our approach towards government resources and business. You can’t have a country where the richest people are public servants. This can only happen if they are directly stealing public funds or they are selling favours.

As chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, Charles Milupi, has correctly observed, when a nation is gripped by corruption, corruption has got its own attendant vices; it’s not just the abuse of public resources and the like. Even the politics are contaminated. Even the way we worship is corrupted. Everything becomes corrupt.

And a corrupt society cannot be expected to have good governance, rule of law or even to hold free and fair elections – elections that are not manipulated or rigged. These are the dangers. This is the organised crime Milupi is talking about. These are the things that should move Zambians to zero tolerance on corruption because if they don’t, the future of this country will be a sad one.

Labels: KASHIWA BULAYA, MINISTRY OF HEALTH, MINISTRY OF WORKS AND SUPPLY, SIMON MITI

posted by MrK @ 2:55 PM