By NATION REPORTER
FORMER Health Permanent Secretary – Administration Dr George Magwende has been sacrificed by those who are deeply involved in the scandalous corruption in the US$100 million contract for the construction of 150 fabricated hospitals in Southern, Western and North-Western Provinces, Raphael Nakacinda has said.
And Mr Nakacinda said he had zoomed in on another scandal which he deemed would be the country’s biggest corruption scandal in the procurement of fertiliser under the new deal administration.
Mr Nakacinda said it was procedurally unattainable for Dr Magwende to have solely initiated and signed the US$100 million contract proposed by a South African company called TFM without the authority and approval of the Attorney General, the Treasury and the Ministry of Health itself.
Mr Nakacinda said in an interview that Dr Magwende had been sacrificed for the sole purpose of protecting those who were truly involved in the scandal.
He claimed that the corruption rot of the $100 million scandal was right in the Ministry of Health and that if the UPND administration were serious about the fight against corruption; Community House should take a real interest in dealing with all those who signed and approved the project before Dr Magwende.
Mr Nakacinda, who was the first to have blown the whistle against the US$100 million scandal said the contract was signed and approved by the Ministry of Justice through the Attorney General, the Ministry of Finance and National Planning through the Secretary to the Treasury and the Zambia Public Procurement Authority (ZPPA).
“If there was corruption as we had zoomed earlier, the people who should have been fired should have been all those who approved and signed the contract before Dr Magwende could complete the trail.
The Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Finance and the ZPPA all approved and advised the Ministry of Health to proceed with the contract. So how can the Permanent Secretary (Dr Magwende) be the one to be fired? He is just a sacrificial lamb,” Mr Nakacinda said.
Mr Nakacinda the US$100 million corruption scandal was similar to the one in which the new dawn allegedly entered into a deal with former Konkola Copper Mine (KCM) provisional liquidator Milingo Lungu using the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and threw her under the bus after the scandal was exposed.
And Mr Nakacinda has announced that he will today expose what he believes could be the biggest in fertiliser procurement under the UPND government.
He said the fertiliser procurement has been shrouded in the mafia-style kind of dealing and would be nothing compared to the raging $100 million construction of hospitals contract.
