Maravi

Zambians are not fools

Zambians are not fools
Written by Editor

There will be no future development for our country without healthy citizens. And one cannot claim to uphold the sanctity of life if there is no provision for minimal health care for all. Every citizen of this country should have the chance to enjoy the well-being necessary for their full human development.

It is very sad to be told by our Minister of Health, Kapembwa Simbao, that the nation is facing a serious crisis because donors have suspended funding to the Ministry of Health. Is Simbao telling us that the healthcare, the welfare of our people was totally left in the hands of donors; it has been donors paying for our people’s health?

Reacting to donors’ suspension of funding to the Ministry of Health, Simbao says: “It is not right, first of all, we are dealing with people’s lives here and you know like you promising me to give me a meal every day and because I make a mistake, you throw your meal when you know I have nowhere else to eat from. It can kill me and basically this is what it is doing.

The people who have decided to withhold their money, if they don’t know, this problem can explode and not just on government but on the country as a whole because people must know that in reality, it is not government that stole the money, it is some unscrupulous people who by their own and selfish means decided to deprive not just government but the people of Zambia of this very important money.

And now they are being punished twice, it is not right. This has brought a lot of untold suffering, we are failing to meet our responsibility, you know like a parent failing to take care of the children, it is very shameful, that’s the situation but the reason is that we knew the money will come, we never thought after somebody promising then one day they will say they can’t give it to us. I don’t think that is right. Then they will know, that look there is no money to expect and this and this must be stopped but not when you had planned for everything. Planning takes into account their promises and then they withdraw their promises, it is not right. I think once the people know where they come from, once the people know what they have done to the Zambian people, I don’t think this will be accepted.”

This is what our Minister of Health is telling us. Do we find this acceptable? The answer is a categorical no. First, it is not right for this government to claim that the abuses of donor funds at the Ministry of Health is simply a case of some unscrupulous and selfish people and the government has got nothing to do with it.

This cannot be true because top leaders of this government participated in the abuse of the resources of the Ministry of Health. From 2001, they have been using the Ministry of Health as a source of finance for their political campaigns. In last year’s elections, Ministry of Health resources were used in Rupiah Banda’s presidential election campaign.

We brought this to the attention of the Zambian people and pictures were published showing Rupiah’s abuse of Ministry of Health resources. And today Simbao wants to tell the nation that government has nothing to do with it and it is equally concerned!

Second, it is not the duty of donors to be totally responsible for the provision of such a vital and important service like healthcare to the Zambian people. It is a responsibility of our leaders and government to provide that service to every Zambian. To leave this vital service to the whims of donors is the most reckless decision or act a leader can make. It simply goes to show the lack of priorities on the part of our leaders.

This government every month collects taxes from the Zambian workers, our business people but have decided not to use that money – but donor money – to provide healthcare for these same people. On what do they use the taxes they collect from the Zambian workers and business people?

They use it to pay themselves high salaries, to buy themselves expensive automobiles, to pay themselves all sorts of gratuities like the midterm gratuity our politicians are about to pay themselves. They use these taxes on Rupiah’s endless but expensive trips abroad. They use this money to pay salaries to their relatives, friends and cadres they have nepotistically employed in government service, in our foreign service.

They use our taxes to provide remuneration for the many unnecessary political jobs they have created to reward friends, relatives and others who patronise them. But when it comes to providing such a critical services, such an important service as healthcare, they don’t have money and the donors should pay for our lives, to keep the Zambian people alive.

If the donors have suspended funding to the Ministry of Health, a sensible and sensitive government that respects the lives of its people would immediately step in and find the money. This money can be found by immediately cutting down on less important expenditure like political gratuities, unnecessary trips that each time cost the taxpayer millions of dollars and other extravagances. The money is there. What is not there is the right priorities.

And as long as health fails to be considered a top priority, a fundamental right of every citizen and the duty of the government; as long as the responsibility of the state in regard to healthcare fails to be recognised; as long as inequalities in the distribution of health resources fail to disappear; as long as poverty, hunger, ignorance and squalor fail to be directly fought against, little will be achieved in improving human health in our country.

Health is an essential right of every citizen of this country and a responsibility of the government.

This would not be considered a very big crisis for our health system if our politicians had set their bearings correctly. We have seen countries with what would appear to be insurmountable economic difficulties continue to provide very high standards of healthcare to their people.

We cannot avoid giving an example of Cuba. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Europe socialist bloc, Cuba lost virtually all its markets for its goods and for the supply of many things. Many started to count days before the collapse of the Cuban Revolution. But during all those difficult years, the Cuban government maintained very high standards of healthcare for their people. There were not even cases of malnutrition because these services received the top priority from the leadership of the Cuban Revolution.

We remember Raul Castro, then Minister of Defence, saying beans were more important than bullets. And that’s the defence minister of a country whose security has been permanently threatened by the world’s most powerful nation – just some 144 kilometres away. The issue here is strictly of priorities.

If the Zambian people were to be asked today to set priorities on how their taxes should be spent, we don’t think they will agree with the priorities set by Rupiah and his friends. They would take their money to the provision of healthcare and suspend political gratuities and other expenditure that is put there to simply salve the egos and ambitions of our politicians.

We cannot continue on this path of letting the most important things in our lives be under the control, direction and funding of donors while we spend our taxes unwisely on things that really don’t matter, things that contribute nothing, or very little, to the welfare of our people. The support of other nations is highly welcome but should not be seen as a permanent basis for our existence, something we cannot do without forever.

And moreover, the donor suspension of funding to the Ministry of Health is justified. We have taken them for a ride for too long. We have actually made fools of them. They give us money for the healthcare of our people, we steal it, we use it to build private lodges and all sorts of personal businesses and we channel some of it to our political election campaigns and expect them to continue funding us. This is asking too much even from the best of friends. This demonstrates serious lack of respect for these friendly nations and peoples that have been helping us over the years.

It is also a sign of serious lack of self-respect on our part. When you listen to Simbao, you feel sorry that he is presenting the Zambian people as a people that seriously lack gratitude. Zambians have a high sense of gratitude towards those who help them. It is their leaders who have a deficiency on this score. And Simbao is cheating himself if he thinks our people will blame this crisis in our health service on the donors. They won’t.

Actually the majority of our people support this suspension of aid because it’s simply creating all sorts of problems in the country. It is a source of corruption and political manipulation. Moreover, it is the Ministry of Health that those who are politically powerful and are well connected were abusing to pay for their medical trips to South Africa even when they got a simple common cold. For medical services that can be provided in Lusaka, they go to Johannesburg at a gigantic cost to the Ministry of Health. And Simbao thinks the Zambian people don’t know all these things and will turn against the donors and sympathise with this corrupt government? Never! The Zambian people are not fools.

Labels: DONORS, HEALTHCARE, KAPEMBWA SIMBAO, MINISTRY OF HEALTH

posted by MrK @ 3:32 PM