By NATION REPORTER
STRONG reports indicate that the Anti-Corruption Commission Director General, Tom Shamakamba, has repeatedly spurned the Board’s directives to pursue credible reports of investigations affecting Ministers, Permanent Secretaries and others in the new dawn administration, Emmanuel Mwamba has said.
Mr Mwamba, the Patriotic Front (PF) information and publicity chairman is alleging that on many occasions, the Board has directed Mr Shamakamba to pursue current corruption cases but has ignored the directives because those involved are serving in President Hakainde Hichilema’s administration.
Mr Mwamba stated that Mr Shamakamba was only interested in pursuing the PF members while the corruption of the UPND was being shelved even where there was clear evidence of graft.
He alleged that President Hichilema’s administration and his ministers were being viewed as a group that was pillaging and plundering national resources using sophisticated methods but that the ACC had decided to not investigate or make arrests against the many UPND senior and high-ranking government officials.
Efforts to get a comment from Mr Shamakamba proved futile as calls placed on his mobile phones were not answered.
“Socialist Party president, Dr. Fred M’membe has stated that Mr Hichilema’s government is proving to be the most corrupt and will pillage public resources than any other previous government. Dr M’membe is on record saying if PF was corrupt, they were mere pick-pocketers, stealing small change. UPND are thieves and plunderers.”
“Hichilema’s government has abandoned open tenders affecting large-scale procurements, preferring the corrupt direct bidding or single-sourcing methods. Recently President Hakainde Hichilema, terminated the appointment of Idah Chella as Director General of the Zambia Public Procurement Authority (ZPPA),” Mr Mwamba said.
Mr Mwamba explained that Ms. Chella was fired for demanding for normalisation of procurement processes that abided by the ZPPA Act.
He said the former ZPPA boss was against direct bidding or single-sourcing, which she said was designed for emergency procurement and not routine processes in her efforts to enhance security of public funds.
Mr Mwamba said Ms Chella had worked hard to promote transparency and accountability at ZPPA but the powers tha- be were not happy and ended up dismissing her for her commitment to due diligence.
“Similarly, the Auditor General Dr Roy Mwambwa ignored to audit corrupt procurements at Ministry of Health, Ministry of Agriculture, Tourism and others. But he opted to conduct a bogus audit on utilisation of public loans, whose projects have previously been audited and Parliament adopted proposed self-correcting recommendations. This scheme falls in line with their open intentions,” he said.
