By Mwansa Kalumba
The UPND administration must publish the US$1.5 billion health deal to be signed with the United States of America (USA) if they have nothing to hide from Zambians, the Citizens First (CF) has demanded.
In a statement, CF spokesperson Stanley Mhango stated that todate no deal about the deal has been made available to the Zambian people and Parliament.
”To date, no copy of this Agreement has been made available to the Zambian people or to Parliament, despite its magnitude and far-reaching implications,” Mhango stated. “Zambians have not forgotten that earlier conditionalities linked to such agreements sought to compromise Zambia’s mineral sovereignty by linking health aid to our critical minerals, and to violate the right to privacy of our citizens by demanding access to and external storage of individual health status and personal medical records. These are matters that go to the heart of our sovereignty and our constitutional rights under Article 17 of the Constitution of Zambia.”
Mhango stated that the agreement would only be appreciated once there was full disclosure of its contents to Zambians.
”There can be no blind support for a secret deal signed in the name of 21 million Zambians,” Mhango stated. “We further condemn in the strongest terms the double standards of the UPND Government and its selective respect for the law. This same Government enacted the Access to Information Act No. 24 of 2023, which was assented to on 22nd December 2023 and operationalized by Statutory Instrument No. 35 of 2024.
”The Government, through the Ministry of Information and Media, has been moving across the country claiming the law is fully operational and that Heads of Departments who deliberately fail to comply will pay penalties from their own pockets. Yet when it comes to a US$1.5 Billion Agreement affecting sovereignty and privacy, the same Government has chosen secrecy. You cannot enact a law on transparency and become the first to violate it. That is hypocrisy and that is the definition of UPND double standards.”
Mhango argued that the Access to Information Act under Section 13 gave every Zambian the right to access information of public interest, and under Section 16 obliges the information holder to respond within 21 days.
He stated that Sections 37 and 39 provided for penalties enforced by the Zambia Human Rights Commission.
”We therefore demand that the Ministry of Health immediately publishes the full, unredacted Agreement with all annexures, side letters and conditionalities, so that Zambians can see for themselves whether our mineral sovereignty is compromised and whether our citizens’ health privacy is being traded,” stated Mhango. “If the UPND has nothing to hide, let them publish the Agreement. Transparency is now law, not a favour from State House.”
