By GIDEON NYENDWA
THE Auditor General (AG) could have deliberately not considered the scandalous procurement of 156 ambulances by the Ministry of Health through ZAMMSA to prevent scrutiny against those involved in the corruption scandal, Mutotwe Kafwaya has said.
Mr Kafwaya, the Patriotic Front (PF) Lunte says the Auditor General did not consider the transaction for the procurement of 156 ambulances so as to avoid raising the anomalies that were only to be discovered by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). He says it is just unbelievable that the AG could have missed the corruption in the procurement of the 156 ambulances, in a transaction that was had all the signs of a corrupt deal. Mr Kafwaya said the scandal of the 156 ambulances with all its irregularities was not queried by the AG until it was inadvertently detected by the PAC in the process considering the Auditor General’s report.
He said it was hard to understand how the AG could not have noticed the scandal because the procurement of 156 ambulances was such a big deal, stating that had audit been based on materiality and risk assessment, the Auditor General was certainly going to consider material transactions.
“That tells me that there is a possibility the AG did not consider that transaction because had they done so, there are questions that would have naturally been asked,” Mr Kafwaya said. Mr Kafwaya said the question that arises was whether contracted, ACE pharmaceuticals and Aqueous Investment Limited were in the business of motor vehicle and their experience in that particular trade.
He said there was also need to ask questions on the criteria of responsiveness, it was not possible that that AG would have missed that audit query.
Mr Kafwaya said it was a material transaction that required the AG to dedicate the offices time to audit the people that were involved in that particular procurement. He said that was a Constituency Development Fund procurement were they had to pull money from all constituencies and no one expected them to be that careless with people’s money.
