TI-Z Acts To Prevent More Health Procurement Scandals

In the wake of the HoneyBee scandal Transparency International Zambia (TI-Z) has been implementing the Open Contracting for Health (OC4H) project which promotes interventions around open contracting.

“Open contracting is a practice of publishing and using accessible procurement-cycle information to ensure that the vast sum of public money is spent honestly, fairly and effectively,” TI-Z explains.

HoneyBee Pharmacy is at the centre of the latest government procurement scandal after a parliamentary inquiry found that the pharmacy supplied several faulty medical products, including mouldy paracetamol and leaky condoms.

The company was awarded a contract worth $17 million in June 2020, despite not being an officially registered company at the time. Numerous products supplied by the company have since been subject to recall and the company has now lost its licence as a result of the scandal.

The OC4H project rolled out by TI-Z “uses government transparency to foster participation between public bodies, businesses and civil society in order to boost the integrity, fairness and efficiency of public contracting.”

“The project seeks to strengthen the capacity of public health systems to implement open contracting, facilitate for the diversity of suppliers in the health sector public procurement and strengthen the capacity of civil society organizations in order to heighten their engagements with the public procurement systems,” TI-Z explains.

TI-Z has also this week welcomed the dismissal of Ms Kakulubelwa as PS Administration at the Ministry of Health (MoH) "given the anomalies that took place under her watch". Previously Health Minister Chitalu Chilufya was sacked from his cabinet position after an outpouring of public rage at the scandalous revelations.

“But our expectation as TI-Z is that this will not be the end of the measures being put in place to clean up the MoH. We believe that the problems at the MoH go beyond individuals and are systemic in nature. We therefore hope that the PS's dismissal, which follows the dismissal of the Minister a few weeks ago forms part of the comprehensive response to addressing the wider systemic issues that are prevalent at the MoH,” the group’s Executive Director Maurice Nyambe has stated.

Nyambe repeated TI-Z’s call for a full independent investigation into the MoH's dealings “in order to root out the institutional and systemic weaknesses that have seemingly allowed corruption to take root in the MoH.”