MoH shrugs off ambulance deal with Avis
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Tuesday September 1, 2015 16:31
The deal was an agreement entered into last year by both the ministry and Avis Botswana for the purchase and rental of 100 ambulances. This year, the agreement came into effect with the purchase of the 100 vehicles by the rental company.
The vehicles arrived sometime this year.
According to people close to the agreement, Avis Botswana was to procure the ambulances and then rent them out to the ministry. But there was a snag. Whilst a brand new 4x4 vehicle costs around P360,000, it has emerged that under the deal, government was going to fork out a minimum of P100,000 per month to rent all the vehicles. The P100,000 however, excluded mileage, rental, insurance, service, and any repairs.
None of the parties were prepared to shed light on what happened, or what motivated the deal. The only information Mmegi received was that there was a deadlock.
In April 2015, the parties went back to the negotiations with Avis strongly arguing that it would not have purchased the ambulances if the ministry had not asked them to do so. It was in a few months later, sometime in June, that the ministry conceded defeat and agreed to purchase the vehicles from Avis. For the past two weeks, drivers from Central Transport Organisation and Botswana Defence Force (BDF) have been helping with the relocation of the vehicles from Botswana National Youth Council premises to BDF Glen Valley camp in Gaborone North.
Still carrying private registration numbers, the vehicles were being parked at the camp where they will be installed with tracking devises and distributed to health facilities across the country.
Mmegi news team visited the camp yesterday, and found the vehicles under heavy security of armed soldiers. When approached, Assistant Minister of Health Alfred Madigele said the decision to rent ambulances from Avis Botswana was taken by the old management but the new management was not satisfied with it.
He confirmed that instead of going ahead with the deal, the ministry resolved to buy the vehicles from the rental company to save costs. “Those ambulances amounted to around P33 million. It is true we bought them from Avis because they bought them knowing that our Ministry would rent them.
“The negotiations took long, but we have since agreed. The Ministry found out that the initial agreement was going to be costly, and the only alternative was to negotiate for purchase, which we did,” Madigele said.
He said they bought them in the last two months. Madigele said the Ministry had a mandate to find avenues to address transport shortage, which the Ministry had been experiencing.
He said the purchase of the ambulances from Avis was even approved by Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Board (PPADB) after analysing the conditions that they were given by Avis.
Former Permanent secretary to MoH, Dr Kolaatamo Malefho confirmed that the ministry was forced to either rent or buy the ambulances from Avis because of their negotiations.
He said there was nothing secretive about the deal, explaining that there was a tender for the supply of vehicles and that even the PPADB gave advise on the matter.
Meanwhile a secretary to Avis General Manager Julian Hill forwarded Mmegi enquiries to the latter, but later the secretary came back to say her boss said, “this is a business deal and the agreement does not allow us to share any information with the third party.”