Parliament has passed three government bills which include the K24 billion grant for the additional financing for Covid-19 emergency response and health systems preparedness project.

Presenting the Bill in Parliament, Minister of Finance Felix Mlusu said there is need to respond to the coronavirus pandemic by providing required resources.

“The fact of the matter is that because of certain emergencies that we had to deal with, and one of the emergencies which we had to deal is this Covid-19 pandemic.

“We had not expected that the Covid pandemic was going to go on for long time, we thought the disease was going to disappear for a short time but because it has gone on for a long time, we had to make sure that we have funds available for to respond,” said Mlusu.

He added that part of the funds will be used procure the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine from India and oxygen equipment to deal with the pandemic.

“Obviously we have to look at the demand, the critical demands are the vaccines themselves as well as the oxygen equipment because when we have people admitted in hospitals, they need oxygen.

“The vaccines themselves as you know we are using the AstraZeneca vaccines and these are produced in India so we are going to access this from the Indian manufacturers,” he added.

The other bills are International Development Association (Additional Financing for Equity with Quality and Learning Secondary Project) (Authorization) which will see treasury having K4.3 billion from World Bank and Bill No. 12 of 2021: Supplementary Appropriation of funds amounting to K156 billion.

However, the opposition has faulted government for excessive borrowing.