Honey Bee dares ZABS – ZAMRA, ZABS get 48 hours ultimatum to retract and apologize

By SIMON MUNTEMBA

HONEY Bee Pharmacy Limited (HBPL) has challenged the Zambia Bureau of Standards (ZABS) and ZAMRA to provide evidence that the condoms and gloves it supplied the Ministry of Health are defective.

The company has also given ZABS and ZAMRA a 48 hour ultimatum to retract their ‘damaging’ allegations against it, failure to which would commence costly legal proceedings against the two public institutions.

In demand letters to ZABS and ZAMRA, Honey Bee Pharmacy through their lawyer, Tutwa Ngulube questioned why contractual obligations with regard the supply of the health kits were ignored.

Honey Bee stated that they were legally supposed to be present when the products supplied were being tested by ZABS.

“The contract demands that if there is any complaint against the product, you are supposed to write to our client, Honey Bee that we want to conduct the test and they should be presence,” the letter read in part.

Honey Bee labelled the results from ZABS as ‘fake’ and challenged the institution to provide evidence that the condoms and gloves were defective.

The company said the products ZABS tested were not the ones they supplied Ministry of Health.

And Mr Ngulube said in an interview that the supplied products were tested at the point of origin by the manufacturers according to WHO standards and found to be safe.

He said it was foul for the public institutions to carry out tests on the condoms and gloves without the presence of Honey Bee Pharmacy.

“They didn’t have to go on their own without informing the supplier. They just wake up and claim that they did a test when there has not been any single complaint from the provinces where the products were taken,” said Mr Ngulube.

Mr Ngulumbe said “as far as our client is concerned, they supplied the product that was accepted by both local and international standards.”

And when contacted for a comment, ZABS executive director, Manuel Mutale said he was constrained to comment on the matter  as he has to respect confidentiality for the client’s results.

“I have no authority to comment on the matter. ZABS is just a laboratory, and as a laboratory, we can just be contracted to do the test and give the results to the client but I cannot start commenting on the results in public,” he said.