The National Democratic Congress (NDC) says it has identified five ministries that can be closed down or fused with others to save resources, arguing that there are too many unnecessary government officers drawing huge salaries.
And NDC says the National Health Insurance Act is a flawed, ill-conceived law that will not succeed, but will be a burden to Zambians.
This is contained in the “Why we deserve your vote” weekly newsletter to News Diggers! written by the party Secretary General Mwenya Musenge.
Musenge stated that the PF government was running a bloated government as they were too many ministries and unnecessary government officers who were drawing huge salaries.
“As NDC we have identified about five government ministries that can be closed down or fused into other government ministries in order to save hundreds of millions of Kwacha. Ministries such as (agriculture, livestock and fisheries) (finance and national planning) (mines and energy (education and higher education) (tourism and chiefs), these can be fused together or consolidated,” he explained.
And Musenge outlined the NDC policy alternative for financing of the health sector.
He stated that when elected into government, NDC would immediately begin the process to repeal the National Health Insurance Act and abolish the National Health Insurance Management Authority.
Musenge stated that the National Health Insurance Act was a flawed, ill-conceived law that would not succeed but would be a burden to the people of Zambia.
“Zambians are already over-taxed. they have the lowest salaries in the SADC region but pay the highest taxes. Does this make sense? Zambians already pay the highest PAYE taxes in the region,” he stated.
Musenge further stated that when elected, the party would require employers that did not provide private health insurance to their employees to give those employees a health insurance allowance.
He stated that the party would further restructure the Ministry of Health.
“Today the MOH is bloated with many bureaucrats occupying offices who are not actually involved in health service delivery. The goal of the NDC is to reduce the doctor to patient and nurse to patient ratio by having more health workers in service delivery and less highly paid administration bureaucrats,” stated Musenge.
He stated that although the health sector needed funding, the party fundamentally disagrees with the means by which the PF was using to raise these funds.
Musenge added that as NDC, they would raise these revenues by taxing other avenues such as the mining companies, by ensuring that mining companies were tax compliant.
“We will not introduce any new mining taxes; we will only strictly enforce existing mining taxation laws to ensure that mining companies are tax compliant and remitting to ZRA all taxes that are due from them by law,” he stated.
Meanwhile, Musenge stated that NDC would be purchasing medical supplies in bulk directly from the manufacturer, to cut out middlemen profits, take advantage of bulk buying discounts and ensure proper controls on the quality of medicines that end up in hospitals.
