JUSTIFYING the purchase of 50 Toyota Land Cruiser ambulances at $288,000 each is ridiculous, says ADD leader Charles Milupi. Milupi, in an interview yesterday, said the PF would not get away with the corruption they are engaging in.

The Ministry of Health has purchased 50 Toyota Land Cruiser ambulances at $288,000 each.

But on Friday last week, government received a Swedish government donation of 25 similar Toyota Land Cruiser ambulances bought at a unit price of $52,550.

Milupi said the PF government should stop taking Zambians for granted.

“It is absolutely ridiculous…this government is spending more time trying to justify crooked deals and in so doing, they are coming up with more and more ridiculous explanations. You see, an ambulance is there to transport those that are indisposed from a point where they are to the hospital where they are given due care by the health experts,” Milupi said.

“To now tell us that they are now coming up with these super models of ambulances where they are telling us once you are in there you don’t even have to go to the hospital, I think that is taking the people of Zambia for granted. What this government must recognise is that people have the purchase of ambulances as a major theft of public resources. The recent order of some ambulances at about US$52,000 each is further confirmation of what we said right from the beginning. We said, look a Toyota Land Cruiser costs so much, a few addition; beds, oxygen tanks and so on cannot take the cost up to US$288,000. So, they will eventually be held to account.”

He said all the institutions of governance – the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC), Police and the OP – had all been stopped from functioning the way they should function.
Milupi said all institutions of governance at the moment existed to serve the appointing authority.

“So, we do not agree with what they have done because first of all, I do not think that Zambia has trained staff to carry out operations and whatever they think can be carried out in these ambulances…the so called state of the art ambulances. These are not the ones that are going to be bought,” he said.

“So, the same explanation they were using on fire tenders is what they are attempting to use on the ambulances, it will not work. They should stop that, wherever they have taken the money they should bring it back so that the Zambian people can have it used on much more worthwhile purposes. We thank the Swedish government for donating the ambulances because those are fit for the purpose. Where are you going to take the super-duper ambulances requiring expertise to operate? Are you now going to start training people to operate these ambulances and the equipment? What equipment? They should tabulate what equipment they are going to put in.”

Milupi wondered why the PF government was going for luxuries when the country’s coffers were dry.

“If you don’t have money to look after yourself, you are not supposed to buy a Mercedes Benz…you buy yourself a Toyota Corolla or something because that is what you can maintain, run…. Zambia at the moment has no money, the money has run out and that is why students are not being paid, the hospitals have no medicine. So, you do not go crazy and go and get state of the art ambulances. In any case, they are not even getting state of the art ambulances. It is just a conduit for siphoning money. The Zambian people have caught them and that is why anybody who comes up to explain their theft, that person and his expressions become very unpopular,” said Milupi.

“They should take this as a lesson that the Zambian people have had enough. They should also look at how the PF came into power. In 2011, the PF came into power by labelling the Rupiah Banda administration as corrupt even though there weren’t many examples at the time. This time there are many examples…they must understand that they won’t get away with it. The Rupiah Banda administration did not get away with it.”