News and Events

Ministry of Health and Wellness recently gathered suppliers of medicines and related commodities under one roof with the aim to achieve solutions to the inherent challenges around the supply of medicines and other related commodities. The meeting also accorded the two parties an opportune moment to give feedback, share experiences, ideas and draw lessons learnt from past interactions.

Minister of Health and Wellness, Honourable Dr Alfred R. Madigele, alluded to some of the challenges the Ministry is faced with which include among others contract management and under resourcing. Dr Madigele assured the attendants that his Ministry is working on addressing the issues to ensure that they become the thing of the past. In other issues, the minister informed the house that as a ministry they are working on installing a system that will improve the turnaround time on procurement and finance processes. “My Ministry also intends to automate most, if not all tenders in the next financial year, 2019/2020,” quipped Madigele.

For their part, the suppliers decried the turnaround time on generating Government Purchase Orders (GPO) and payments, citing that RFQs which should be deemed as emergency normally take up to four months before a GPO is produced, lack of communication from procuring entities, shortage of procurement officers and accounts officers at CMS which adversely affects suppliers’ competitiveness. Some posited that Central Medical Stores should communicate their needs before the tender is floated to allow for sourcing of samples which in most cases is from abroad. Madigele promised that the Ministry will have more of these engagements in future.. Read more...