Zimbabwe’s anti-product police unit, set up in 2018, has recovered about 40 boxes of thousands of dollars worth of COVID-19 test packages stolen from a hospital in the country’s second largest city, Bulawayo.
The test, a donation from UNICEF, had been stored in a building opposite the central bank in the capital Harare, intended for the black market.
It was one of the latest cases of pandemic-related transplantation that took place a year after the corona virus appeared in the country.
Zimbabwe recorded its first COVID-19 case on March 20 last year and three and a half months later the Minister of Health was fired for corruption.
He was accused of irregularly awarding a foreign company a multi-million dollar contract to supply personal protective equipment, test kits and drugs.
In addition, he was accused of trying to force the Treasury to pay for 15,000 coronavirus test kits stored at Harare International Airport. After an inspection, only 3700 kits were found.
The South African country began rolling out COVID-19 jabs last month and questions are being raised about the vaccine procurement process.
The government has set aside $ 100 million for vaccines to inoculate 10 million of the population at 14.5 million.
“People I’ve talked to are worried that there will be corruption, there will be looting of public funds,” said Hopewell Chin’ono, a whistleblower journalist whose report was rejected by the health minister.
The ‘They Plunder’ song goes viral
In February, shortly after his release from prison – his third arrest in six months – the investigative journalist released a short reggae track “Demloot” (the looters) which immediately went viral.
Zimbabwe’s leading epidemiologist Portia Manangazira was recently arrested for recruiting 28 relatives, including her father, as a public health worker in a nearly $ 800,000 virus awareness program funded by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).
The training, which is earmarked for 800 public health workers, saw her family draw a $ 600-a-month scholarship for three months, prosecutors said.
The anti-corruption watchdog is investigating a dozen cases linked to the coronavirus program.
“At least ten cases are … (linked to) corruption in the procurement of personal protection and other materials,” said John Makamure, a spokesman for the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission.
The charges include criminal misconduct by public officials, fraud and theft, Makamure said, refusing to divulge details.
Transparency International Zimbabwe told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that it had received 1,400 complaints related to corruption in health care, policing and humanitarian aid in the 2020 pandemic.
Healthcare professionals complain about inadequate protective equipment and blame corruption for the shortage.
“The situation is serious,” said Simbarashe Tafirenyika, the leader of the nursing team.
According to official figures, the virus has killed at least 1,500 of the nearly 37,000 cases diagnosed – an underestimation according to experts.
The peak of the second wave earlier this year revealed the serious state of public hospitals that had already collapsed as a result of two decades of economic crisis and uncontrolled inflation under former leader Robert Mugabe’s 37-year rule.
State hospitals were saturated in January and private hospitals were on fire to take advantage of this and charge desperate families exorbitant fees – as much as $ 2,500 a week for the use of a ventilator.
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