Govt yet to satisfy MoH funding donor conditions

Govt yet to satisfy MoH funding donor conditions
Written by Masuzyo Chakwe
Monday, July 27, 2009 12:29:14 PM

NETHERLANDS Ambassador to Zambia Harry Molenaar has said donors that have withdrawn funding to the Ministry of Health following revelations of corruption are still waiting for some conditions to be fulfilled before funding can be resumed. In an interview, Ambassador Molenaar said the money that Sweden had released had nothing to do with the expanded basket they were talking about.

"So we are still waiting for some conditions to be fulfilled of our action plan and also the ministry gave some communication on that, so these conditions have to be fulfilled before we can relaunch our funding and it's also our headquarters which are involved. Our headquarters of course as also the government here is mentioning. What is important is that we have to convince our taxpayers, our government that monies are well spent," Ambassador Molenaar said last Thursday.

He said such measures included getting better structures within the ministry and ensuring audits worked well.

"We are working on that joint operation with the Ministry. We have a joint technical committee, a joint governance committee to improve the oversight within the ministry," he said.

On the 2007 Auditor General's report on parastatals, Ambassador Molenaar said donors were looking forward to getting that information in writing, as that was one of the conditions.

He said he hoped to see that the budget was in line with what the government had planned for this country.

"I mean there is the FNDP [Fifth National Development Plan], we hope it will be in line and consistent with that as much as possible," he said.

Ambassador Molenaar said he could not give the exact figure of how much his country would give Zambia because it depended on developments and the presentation.

"And we have also the Ministry of Finance, we are in process of defining a roadmap in which certain progress has to be measured and if that is measured we can make our commitment and that will be done in the coming months," Ambassador Molenaar said.

And United States Ambassador to Zambia Donald Booth said the donors that suspended funding to the Ministry of Health had no other choice.

Ambassador Booth said those donors and other cooperating partners had engaged with the government to put measures in place to ensure that funding that was given to the Ministry of Health and or any other part of government would be used as agreed

"Some donors have given money directly as budget support to the Ministry of Health and when they saw that some unscrupulous civil servants in the ministry had embezzled the funds, they had to stop disbursements until they were sure procedures were in place to ensure that no future funds that they put in would also be vulnerable so they really had no choice but to suspend," Ambassador Booth said.

Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) recently suspended funding to the Ministry of Health. Prior to that Sweden, through Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), and the Netherlands suspended aid to the Ministry of Health following revelations of corruption.