Africa-Press – Zambia. Honey-bee Pharmacy Lawyer Tutwa Ngulube has warned that government must pay up to $5million for the materials that Honey-bee Pharmacy supplied to the Ministry of Health or face the consequences that come with breach of contract.
Mr. Ngulube described as a hoax suggestions that Honey-bee supplied defective materials because no credible evidence from scientific assay had been rendered.
And the staff at Medical Stores have revealed that the six workers dismissed in connection with the matter were mere victims of an elaborate cover-up campaign intended to mislead the nation over the matter.
“The truth is that there was nothing wrong with the drugs and materials supplied by Honey-bee, that is why they were sent to Kabwe and Kasama which were facing a serious shortage of drugs,” he said. He explained that defective drugs were destroyed and not simply put in quarantine. “This must tell you something, about the attempt to mislead.”
Mr. Ngulube said the government was incurring interest because the contract that was entered into between the Ministry of Health and Honeybee Pharmacy provided that if the government does not pay within 60 days, 25 percent of the amount they were supposed to pay becomes the interest.
He said that Honeybee supplied the materials to the ministry when the government had no money to pay cash and as per contract, they were supposed to pay for what was supplied within 60 days and they failed.
Mr Ngulube said it was because the government breached the contract by failing to pay that they started cooking up stories of the drugs being expired so that they could escape from paying.
He said that any month that passes without the government paying Honeybee, the country incurs a loss because it is a moral obligation for Government to pay as per contract.
“Honeybee does not incur any losses,” he said.
Mr. Ngulube said that from the time that they put up demands for payment from the government the amount was about $3 million and now the money they owe has accumulated to about $5 million.
He said when the issue of supplying expired drugs arose, the supplier got some samples and sent them to a World Health Organisation (WHO) accredited laboratory for testing and they were certified fit for use.
Mr. Ngulube also said that in the same vein, the Zambian government sent the condoms and medicines to several laboratories that were accredited to WHO and the results showed that the supplies were within the parameters.
He also wondered why, if the materials that Honeybee supplied were defective, the Zambia Medicines Regulatory Authority cleared them when they were imported. Mr Ngulube said that the government never even wanted to make the information public that they were proven wrong by international laboratories.
He also said that the contract also provided for arbitration so if the government saw that they were supplied with defective drugs what stopped them from taking the matter for arbitration, “because they know that their claims were wrong.”
Mr Ngulube said there was a legal document (a contract) that the Ministry of Health drafted and signed with guidance from the Attorney General that they have to honour. “They must pay because the time we are going to take them on, the amount would have accumulated even more,” he said. He said that when Covid-19 infections were at their peak in the country, the government used up almost all the drugs that were supplied by Honeybee.
Mr Ngulube said that the drugs that were supplied between 2018 and 2019 were not expired. “Now that government kept them from that time they wanted to claim that they supplied expired drugs four years later,” he said.
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