Mundubile tasks anti-graft agency to probe $70 million drug deal with Egyptian firm

Opposition Patriotic Front (PF) has challenged the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) to immediately take keen interest in the single-sourcing of a private foreign company to procure drugs on behalf of Zambia’s government.

Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Brian Mundubile, has alleged that the single sourcing of an Egyptian company to supply and deliver all essential medicines and other medical supplies worth US$70 million could be yet another grand corruption taking place in the United Party for National Development (UPND) administration.

Mundubile said the new dawn administration which claimed to be fighting corruption, had made it a tradition to use single-sourcing as the only mode of procurement since assuming the governance of the country.

“We are challenging the ACC to immediately take keen interest in the single-sourcing of a private foreign company to procure drugs on behalf of Zambia’s Government,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.

He said the law was clear on single-sourcing and what circumstances should exist before resorting to direct bidding as a mode of procurement.

Mundubile said one of the circumstances for single-sourcing was that such a particular procurement should be an urgent one, while the other condition demanded that the product being sourced should be uniquely related to the company that was supplying.

He said it was observed that the UPND administration was single sourcing even when a particular procurement was not of an urgent nature.

“We believe that it is because of the corruption in the UPND Administration that they have picked single sourcing as a mode of procurement.

“We must understand that this is not the first time that the Government is procuring drugs,” Mundubile said.

He said the UPND Administration should note that Zambians would not sit back but begin to interrogate such procurements to safeguard national resources against corruption.

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