She presented a clear timeline of events leading to the purchase of the vehicles which clearly implied that the current Minister of Local Government, Benny Tetamashimba was aware of this purchase. Tetamashimba attended meetings between May 27 to May 30 last year at which a decision was made to buy the hearses among other things in his capacity as deputy Minister. The Hon. Minister is either incompetent or is not telling us the whole truth about his involvement in this issue. It also goes to show how inefficient our government (political) and civil service are if it requires a former Minister to clarify matters on such an issue. One would think the Permanent secretary or even the Minister would have tasked one of the civil servants to go through the records to find out the chain of events leading to the purchase of the infamous motors. We therefore can only conclude that Tetamashimba and the President are being vindictive and are merely trying to use this matter to ‘teach’ Masebo a lesson for supporting Magande in the race to become the MMD presidential candidate last year.
Hon. Masebo’s statement has provided us with the answer to HOW these hearses were purchased. We now require is a similar account to WHY the purchase was made and if there was any CORRUPTION in the transaction. Tetamashimba has reported Masebo to the Anti-Corruption Commission and we hope this would help answer the corruption question but most Zambia are still amazed that a committee of intelligent men and women thought spending scare resources on 100 hearse at a cost of $290000 was a good idea. Why not 100 ambulances or spend $290000 to improve 100 rural health centres. The same meeting decided to purchase 30 tractors to be used in garbage collection. Had they decided to purchase 130 tractors and no hearses, there would be no story because everybody can see the mountains of rubbish surrounding our towns.
The PANEL
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