PRESIDENT Hakainde Hichilema has described the health sector as a cancerous sector which instead of healing people also needs healing.
On Friday last week, President Hichilema received preliminary findings of the forensic audit on the Zambia Medicines and Medical Supplies Agency (ZAMMSA) which he said exposed the selfish individuals who have been profiting from drugs meant to benefit citizens.
The President stated that the recent preliminary forensic audit report has revealed a lot of problematic individuals and sanctions will soon be taken.
He disclosed that Government had subcontracted two private audit firms to investigate scandals across the sector.
“The health sector is in a sick sector itself. It’s supposed to be healing but it’s been sick in terms of public drugs, cancerous situations – an old situation we inherited. So the president asked for an audit, not a normal audit but a forensic audit and we knew that inside government we didn’t have the capacity but the auditor of all public finances is the auditor general. This story is very important so we then asked the auditor general to subcontract to private firms with capacity to do forensic audit in accordance with the law and that process was undertaken.”
“Terms of reference were reviewed by our cooperating partners in the health sector and the contract was awarded to Price Waterhouse and Andrew Chibuye,” revealed the President.
The Head of State added that Price Waterhouse was given the contract up to December of which it delivered the findings last Friday.
President Hichilema stated that government needed to have the initial findings in order to determine which direction the investigations were going.
“In the process, some of our cooperating partners started issuing contrary statements that there is nothing happening in controlling the problems in the cancerous health sector. Contrary to what we agreed [to] the process so I called a meeting here last Friday and we ended up walking together and hugging each other and we found that the work we agreed, what Price Waterhouse has done is according to the work we asked them to do, the preliminary report.”
“The final report will come in December and in December will sit again to now agree what sanctions need to be taken,” he said.
President Hichilema stated that the health sector has had problems for almost 20 years now and his government is determined to root out the problems.
“And we can’t do it by a thumb suck, we have to pin down where the problems are, who is taking drugs, how is it that drugs leave the health process and end up in private pharmacies, some of which are owned by people working in the health sector.”
“We have now established where the problem is and when we come to you for your support, we will lay the report on the table and say this is what has been going on and these are the actions we are taking and we are determined, if we have to remove 100 people so it will be,” said the Head of State.
By Catherine Pule
Kalemba, December 9, 2024
