High Court in Kampala has summoned the Attorney General and the National Medical Stores to respond to claims that the latter has continuously withdrawn money from the Consolidated Fund to purchase imported Anti-retroviral and Anti -malarial drugs from a local manufacturer, disguised as locally made.
The documents before Court show that during the period of December 2005 and April 2012, Government signed a memorandum of understanding with Quality Chemicals Uganda Limited (now CIPLA) to manufacture ARVs and Anti-malarial drugs, which government would buy at a 15% benefit to the company.
The petitioner Godfrey Magezi –a procurement practitioner — holds that investigations by the IGG revealed that the company, whose contract is still valid up to 2019 only manufactures 16% of the required drugs and imports the remaining 84%; which it fraudulently packages as locally made in order to selfishly enrich itself from the government deal.
Magezi is seeking a court order directing Government and the National Medical Stores to recover over Shs. 61billion from CIPLA Quality Chemicals Industries.
Deputy Court registrar Alex Ajiiji has given National Medical stores 15 days to file in their defense