Africa-Press – Lesotho. FORMER Health Minister Motlatsi Maqelepo has been implicated in the hiring of Covid-19 quarantine facilities without following procedures. Primary Healthcare Director, Dr ’Makhoase Ranyali, told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Monday that Maqelepo instructed her to hire the facilities.
Close to M2.9 million was paid to Khali Hotel and AM Nqoko Investment Property from the Covid-19 budget in a transaction the PAC says was suspicious. The PAC chairperson, ’Machabana Lemphane-Letsie, said in her view there was no proof that indeed the two facilities housed Covid-19 patients.
“The procurement looks fraudulent as nothing proves that indeed people were quarantined there,” Lemphane-Letsie said.
She said Dr Ranyali should provide evidence that the two facilities housed 151 people who were presumed to have stayed there for 18 days. There was no purchase order from the government for the two facilities to quarantine the patients, she argued.
She said the purchase orders were issued weeks after quarantine dates, insinuating this might have been done to defraud the government. The Health Ministry management admitted that mistakes were made in the procurement processes during that time.
“It is true we did not follow the right procedures because everything was happening quickly,” Dr Ranyali said. She said Maqelepo “ordered us to go to those facilities”. “We were under pressure due to the Covid-19 situation,” she said.
She said the first facility they engaged was Thaba-Bosiu Cultural Village and “we did not follow procedures because Covid-19 was rife”. “It was a mistake,” she said.
Dr Ranyali said the situation was desperate because many facilities were refusing to accommodate Covid-19 suspects. But Lemphane-Letsie argued that this repeated itself in 2021 when Covid-19 had become a widely-known problem, which warranted proper preparation for it.
“Why didn’t you prepare for the situation?” Lemphane Letsie asked.
Dr Ranyali responded that the situation caught them off guard as they thought the positive cases were declining when suddenly a new wave wreaked havoc.
Lemphane-Letsie again asked why the requisition for the things that happened in January had to be launched in March. “It raises an alarm that you waited until March, it looks like those facilities were never used, maybe you were taking chances,” Lemphane-Letsie said.
March final refers to the end of the government’s financial year, which ends on March 31, when it is generally believed that civil servants issue purchase orders and wildly pay service suppliers in haste to avoid the deadline.
It is during this hurry to order and pay that it is believed some make fraudulent transactions. “Nothing convinces us that those facilities were used,” Lemphane-Letsie said.
Dr Ranyali said she is “aware of many mistakes that happened during that time”. She however blamed the National Covid-19 Secretariat (Nacosec) for the unlawful procurement of the quarantine facilities.
Maqelepo denied Dr Ranyali’s allegations. “Under what circumstances would I instruct them to choose facilities? After my deployment, I found people already being quarantined as per the then cabinet decision,” Maqelepo said.
“All I can remember is that I could not order people to do anything, there was a command centre that was working on such issues. It is not true.”
For More News And Analysis About Lesotho Follow Africa-Press
