UPND HAS NOT SHOWN POLITICAL WILL IN ENDING DRUG SHORTAGE, KAPYANGA

THE UPND has shown more political will in creating by-elections at the expense of ensuring that hospitals around the country are stocked with drugs, Mpika Member of Parliament Francis Kapyanga has said

Mr Kapyanga said in an interview that resources that were being used in the by-elections could be used to procure medicine for the clinics and hospitals around the country.

He said Mpika and Muchinga Province in general has for a long time not had medicine.

Mr Kapyanga said the pressure was coming on Members of Parliament from the people in the constituencies for them to buy them drugs when prescribed at the hospital.

“Every patient who has my line will call to ask for some money to buy medicine because they are only given prescriptions,” Mr Kapyanga said

Mr Kapyanga said the Minister of Health has for so many times been on the floor of the house misleading the nation by saying things that are not there, invading reality.

He said it was disappointing that everything was collapsing in the health sector yet the government was busy creating more by-elections.

Mr Kapyanga said the councillorship position should be revised in such a way that one might be able to be councillor and hold a position in the civil service because it was a voluntary position.

“The UPND were determined to create and more by elections by ensuring that those councillors who were recruited in the civil service resign from their positions,” he said

He said the resources that are being wasted would have been channeled to the health sector

And Mr Kapyanga said it was unfortunate that the Minister of Health had decided to become a story teller while the situation on the ground remains the same.

He said the health system has collapsed and people are dying because district hospitals have been reduced to nothing but small health centres.