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BABANE – Some officials of the Ministry of Health allegedly received fully paid airfare, vacations and trips abroad from some local doctorsPharmaceutical suppliers.
This is part of a report submitted by Boyce Mkhize, lead investigator of a forensic audit of drug procurement and distribution in Swaziland’s public health institutions.
Mkhize was commissioned by Funduzi Forensic Services (Pty) Ltd, the company tasked with conducting a forensic investigation into the entire process of ordering, purchasing, paying for, delivering and supplying medicines to the country’s public health agencies. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) asked the company to summarise the report before it could be tabled in Parliament yesterday.
Mkhize initially stressed to the committee that as a fraud examiner he was accountable to two regulatory bodies, one of which was the Institute of Certified Fraud Examiners. He said that because he was a senior advocate (advocate) of the High Court of South Africa, he was also accountable to the Bar Council of South Africa. Mkhize mentioned that over €1 billion was allegedly paid to suppliers without purchase orders between 2021 and 2023, and stressed that part of the challenge in their findings was that there was evidence of collusion between staff responsible for managing the process and administration of the supply of medicines and some of the suppliers.
In fact, he said, some health officials helped suppliers in the procurement process, which is prohibited by anti-corruption laws because it basically means they gave an advantage to a particular supplier. He mentioned that some suppliers would dump unordered stock and staff would not return it, arguing that there were no orders. Mkhize said they would wait for a period of time before the supplier would submit an invoice for the same stock that was not ordered and order the stock against which the invoice was made. He also said they found that some suppliers would also dump stock with a shelf life shorter than the stipulated one. He noted that the stipulated shelf life for any medicine supplied was 18 months but their findings pointed out that this expectation was sometimes ignored.
Re-labeling
Mkhize also stressed that some health officials helped suppliers to relabel certain medicines at the Central Medicines Store (CMS) premises, which was not in compliance and indicated a certain collusion and conspiracy that could create a certain impression about certain medicines, which might not be the case. “Staff should not touch any labeling related to medicines because there are legal consequences. If there is a problem with a patient, depending on the batch, an investigation would usually be launched to determine what happened and whether the relabeling took place at the CMS premises, the legal consequences of this are too serious,” he said.
These are the allegations in the report but it is yet to be debated in Parliament. Mkhize also claimed that the question that came to their mind was why the staff did this and they got their answer when they started digging deeper and found certain worrying aspects. Firstly, Mkhize revealed that they found that some staff were paid in cash, allegedly transferred into the staff’s bank accounts by some suppliers and there was evidence. “No wonder there is a fight around this report and some people want it not to be released. It contains these things and that is why some people have been shouting and trying to introduce tricks, shooting, attacking couriers just because they know what is in the report,” he said.
Mkhize stressed that the findings were not figments of the imagination but hard evidence which had been shared with law enforcement officers who were investigating the matter. “We found that some staff members were actually getting paid trips from certain suppliers. They were getting paid for holidays and flights abroad and that is why we have to fight this report now with all our might because it implicates staff members but also the suppliers of medicines,” he said.
administrative
Mkhize said the situations they uncovered could have induced staff to accept medicines that were not ordered, medicines with a shorter shelf life, and to give priority to certain suppliers of medicines so that they would always be at the front of the queue for supplies. “We found that the entire management of medical medicines and suppliers was not going smoothly and our questions were answered. We found that the public was being deceived, people were suffering, and God knows how many people died who would have lived but for these indecent acts which were in some cases perpetrated by some suppliers and the staff involved,” he claimed.Mkhize stressed that they made recommendations on what needed to be done, which he also summarized. When PAC chairperson, MP Madala Mhlanga, asked Health Chief Secretary Khanya Mabuza whether it truly reflected the challenges facing the ministry, he acknowledged the contents of the report.
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