A FEW years after Zambia gained her political independence in 1964, transport at many Government departments, notably hospitals and police stations, was not much of a problem.
Then with little or no means of communication in terms of telephones, people with sick relatives would simply walk or cycle to a nearby hospital and ask for transport.
Chances were that at each hospital, including clinics, there was always an ambulance, even if this meant a Land Rover, on standby, which health authorities would immediately dispatch to go and pick the patient and bring him/her to the hospital for immediate medical attention.
The same thing applied to police stations where transport to go and pick up suspects did not pose a major challenge.
Today this is no longer the case. Even if one has to dial a tool-free emergency line asking for an ambulance or police vehicle, chances are that he/she will most likely be told that “there is no transport”.
The situation seems to be worse in the Police Service where a lack of transport at various police stations has been described as a ‘big crisis’ that even the Government is aware of.
Nowadays, it is not unusual to hear reports of police failing to take suspects to courts from the holding cells, citing lack of transport.
In one incident, Kapiri Mposhi magistrate Greenwell Malumani threatened that he would soon start discharging accused persons standing trial who could not availed before the court by the police due to transport problems.
Magistrate Malumani made this threat after a prosecutor applied for adjournment of two cases, citing transport logistics as reasons behind police’s failure to bring remandees before the court.
The magistrate’s observation was that failure by the Zambia Police Service to bring accused persons before the court amounted to violation of human rights.
In some instances, especially when under such pressure, police reportedly resort to hitchhiking when transporting suspects awaiting court appearance, a situation which is not conducive to the normal operation of the justice system.
As with the situation at hospitals and clinics, it is rare that ambulances will be used to go and pick up critically ill patients and take them to other healthcare facilities for treatment.
Of course it is true the situation today is not as it was a few years after independence. Things have changed, especially in terms of population increase.
This is true considering that at independence, the country had just more than four million people compared to the current situation where statisticians are talking of not less than 14 million Zambians,
besides hundreds of thousands of Zambian residents of foreign origin.
Furthermore, post-independence Zambia had a much more favourable economic outlook which was underpinned by a sustained growth in copper production.
This adequately well Zambia’s small population, and enabled the authorities to build schools and health centres country-wide, nearly all of which were manned by medical doctors or clinical officers,
nursing staff as well as ambulances or Land Rovers in the case of rural outposts.
This made it easier for health personnel to quickly respond to emergencies around their areas of operation.
With the Government constructing more health centres country-wide, it is clear there is need by the authorities to try and meet the health needs of the growing population.
It is even much more pleasing to note that instead of merely building hospitals and clinics, the Government has gone a step further by procuring and equipping some of these health facilities with state-of-the-art ambulances.
We, therefore, salute the Government for purchasing an K850,000 high-tech ambulance from Germany which is equipped with life-support facilities that will enable patients in critical condition receive treatment on board while being taken to hospitals.
The Government is equally building more police posts with the recent one which was commissioned this week in Mapatizya, Southern Province, on Tuesday this week. We hope even these police posts will equally have motor-vehicles allocated to them to ease transport challenges
faced by the men and women in uniform.  OPINION