Fight Corruption to Defeat COVID-19

Business Behind COVID-19 

Few days ago, I saw a meme that drew my concern.

Well, memes are meant to be funny, but I don’t see the funny part in this particular one.

In my attempt to evaluate the message behind the meme, I took a step to research about the issue and complied a piece of detailed information about the issue.

To be more specific, I was more interested in how Kenya has to do with this.

Corrupt KEMSA 

Kenya Medical Supplies Authority is a business model/state corporation under the Ministry of Health established under the KEMSA Act 2013 with a mandate to oversee several responsibilities, among them procuring warehouse and distributing drugs and medical supplies for prescribed public health programs.

With that clearly stated, KEMSA must and indeed it was responsible for receiving and distributing the donation by the Chinese business magnate, investor and philanthropist, Jack Ma.

As far as we (Kenyans) knows about the incident, a donation to Kenya was unloaded from the cargo plane during late March 2020.

The package is said to have consisted of 100,000 face masks and 20,000 testing kits.

On March 24, the package was reported to have arrived at JKIA.

Few days later, Health Director-General Patrick Amoth declared that the country was experiencing a sincere shortage of test kits.

To add on the same, the director confirmed that the country had received Jack Ma’s donation, that would settle the issue for a couple of weeks.

Funny enough, health workers still raised complains over the shortage, complaining that they were experiencing a shortage of personal protective equipment.

On April 20^th, a second donation from the Chinese government, literary on the same aerodrome.

 Jonah Manjari Mwangi is the appointed Chief Executive Officer with the effect of 1st July 2018, should we put blame on him!!

Suba Churchill had something to say on the same. According to him, perhaps Jack Ma’s donations were sold to KEMSA.

In an attempt to solve the issue, Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) was also to be included. According to CSRG, “The shadowy companies that benefited from KEMSA tenders may have supplied what had been donated to Kenyans for free.”

Report confirms that KEMSA had appointed CROWN healthcare and Megascope healthcare to clear the consignment from JKIA.

 

Records are there that the two companies received the kits, however, what happened after it is not recorded.

Perhaps the entire system was manipulated, no wonder the missing records.

There are claims that the donated PPE was illegally smuggled to Tanzania. There are also claims that the few kits that were left in the country were sold to domestic companies. Later, the goods were sold back to KEMSA.

PIVOTECH Company Limited in Tanzania is among the companies that received part of the diverted consignment.

According to the company’s official website (https://www.pivotechgroup.co.tz/home/),  is meant to offer generated maintenance, power supply, and other engineering services.

This sounds a game, right?

Well, it’s actually, a game and there are a lot of hidden facts within it.

Apart From KEMSA...

Apart from KEMSA, there are many other emergency funds that are nowhere to be found. Kenya is said to have received US$739 (Ksh 78.3 billion) from International Momentary Fund (IMF) on May 6^th 2020. The money was a form of a donation to support the country in fighting COVID-19.

During the same period, the World Bank approved $1 billion to finance Kenya in addressing COVID-19.

On 2^nd of April 2020, Kenya received an additional $50 million (Ksh 5.2 billion) to support Kenya’s fight against the pandemic. By this time, the confirmed COVID-19 cases were 81.

On May 22^nd, African Development Bank offered amount equivalent to Ksh 22.5 billion with an aim of boosting the response against the pandemic.

On 9^th June 2020, the European Union granted Ksh 7.8 billion to Kenya.

To be precise, more than Ksh 40 billion has been looted and the rich can now enrich themselves better.

KEMSA took an attempt to hide the looting. KEMSA had a message that was sent to several companies around Kenya concerned with the funds, “The Government of Kenya has set aside funds to undertake emergency procurement of medical commodities in the preparedness of Covid-19. It is intended that part of the proceeds of the funds will be used to cover eligible payments under the contract for the supply of…””

How some companies got to win such tenders is a question still to be answered.