It was fraudulent
Written by Millennium on December 13, 2022
By NATION REPORTER
Drama has continued to play out in the US$100 million TFM Holdings contract to construct prefabricated hospitals in Zambia with Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary for Technical Services Professor Luckson Kasonka branding the transaction fraudulent, barely eight months after he signed the deal, which was also approved by the Attorney General Mulilo Kabesha and Secretary to Treasury, Felix Nkulukusa.
The Ministry of Health has since terminated the contract for government’s convenience, an act that is going to make the treasury lose a whoping US$40 million in compensation for breach of contractual obligations.
Appearing before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) yesterday, Prof Kasonka attempted to tabulate the events leading to the awarding of the contract and its subsequent cancellation this month without any attachments of the documents supporting his narrative.
In his submission, Prof Kasonka claimed TFM was not domiciled in Zambia and was not registered with PACRA and the National Construction Council (ACC).
However, this is a contract for which TFM Holdings had made solicitation and sent its own proposal to the Ministry of Health and it was not therefore expected to be registered with PACRA or NCC.
The Daily Nation has had sight of the bidding data sheet which did not specify the requirement of NCC or registration with PACRA because the contract was a solicitation from the South African company.
The bidding data sheet however specified the requirement for Power of Attorney which the TFM complied with.
This prompted the chairman of the PAC, Mr Warren Mwambazi to ask Prof Kasonka to leave the hearing and go and prepare himself for he was discussing matters without supporting documents.
Prof Kasonka said the TFM deal was a unique project but claimed could have been potentially fraudulent which was why the Ministry of Health decided terminate the project.
He claimed that TFM Holdings was not registered in Zambia under NCC and had no permanent address in the country while stating that the company was a South African.
The PAC had to abruptly stop Prof Kasonka from continuing with this submission because he was talking about letters and correspondences that were not attached to the appendixes and even the contract itself was not attached.
“The committee would have loved to look at the contract and the whole evaluation reports that were done before the contract was entered so that we can see who was involved in the transaction and their point of view, but otherwise you are giving us details that are not part of the submission,” the Committee said.
The Committee said what Prof Kasonka was submitting could be appreciated if they could have complete documents of what was being submitted even if they had some of them but most were from the auditor general.
Last week, while appearing on PAC, Prof Kasonka admited that in fact, the TFM contract was signed by the new deal administration and not the Patriotic Front (PF) government.
Prof Kasonka has disclosed that a ministerial committee had been constituted to consider the contract and that it was decided that it would be prudent to award the contract to TFM contrary to assertions by Sylvia Masebo, the Health Minister that she did not know anything about the contract.
The admission by Prof Kasonka is also contrary to his assertions that the contract was signed by the previous government and that former Health Minister Dr Jonas Chanda had been pushing for the contract.
