Parliament’s social cluster this week learned that the ministry of health suffered a M29 million revenue shortfall for the financial year 2023/24, and one of the contributors to this loss of income is corruption in the issuance of cannabis licenses.
The ministry reported that it has fallen woefully short of its expected collection of M5.6 million, getting only M750,000.
A total of 198 cannabis companies were licensed. Out of that, 75 had not paid for their licenses while 24 were operating. The shortcomings in the industry were due to non-compliance of companies as some had a habit of depositing money into the ministry’s account before seeking instructions from the ministry.
So what? This is nothing new. In fact, the ministry of health launched a long overdue investigation into the awarding of medicinal cannabis licenses in 2019 after it discovered that some companies may have been in possession of licenses obtained fraudulently.
Medicinal cannabis licenses are issued by the ministry of health after satisfying itself that an applicant has deposited the required M450,000 fee into a designated Lesotho Post Bank account.
According to then health minister Nkaku Kabi, the ministry had discovered that some (unnamed) companies holding licenses had not transferred funds into the account despite producing proof of such payments.
The ministry picked up this fraud when some banks denied existence and knowledge of electronic transfers that were purported to have been affected by them.
Like we said earlier, this is nothing new. Those in charge of the ministry have always known and they still know the identity of the mastermind behind the cannabis licensing corruption. Yet no one seems to have the cajónes’ to take action against this person. The question is, why?
The people do not give two hoops in Hades about this old sob story. What they need to see is action taken against license criminals.
