1 September 2026 by Pascalinah Kabi

Lesotho’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) will today, 1 September 2026, continue its investigations into the operations and financial management of the country’s only tertiary hospital – Queen ‘Mamohato Memorial Hospital – after a break that lasted for about three weeks.

Before the break, the nation learnt how the hospital’s finance manager, Tšele Sehlabo, failed the job interview and was ranked at the bottom by the interviewing panel, only to be hired after the hospital management used its discretion to offer him the job.

Years later, Sehlabo struggled to provide satisfactory answers about the finances of a hospital that spends around M224 million of the M550 million annual subvention from the Government of Lesotho on emoluments. This is money that pays the salaries of some of the people whom we heard during the PAC sittings in July 2026 were not qualified for their positions at this hospital. It is public money that belongs to you, the good taxpaying citizen.

You, the taxpayer, are also financing the hiring of vehicles and the provision of meat at the hospital, all allegedly done through corrupt means. To bring it closer to home, corruption does not only give you and other citizens poor services. It can make you pay twice: first through taxes that fund public institutions, and again when corruption forces you to spend your own money to obtain services that public funds were supposed to provide.

For instance, Lesotho is known for poor service delivery at public health facilities, forcing those taxpayers who can afford consultation fees of around M500 at private facilities to turn to private surgeries.

This notion is supported by a 2026 study titled Health Sector Corruption and Access to Healthcare in Africa, which examined 34 African countries and concluded that health-sector corruption can make healthcare particularly costly or unaffordable. The researchers also found that corruption affects not only access to healthcare but also the quality of services received by those who manage to access the system.

But not all hope is lost. Corruption is scared of noise. It is done in darkness because those who engage in it do not want to be caught. But if you and I constantly blow the whistle, we can play our part as good citizens by helping to expose it through public-interest journalism.

At Uncensored News, we are asking you for only two things:

1. Please give us tip-offs. We will protect you as our source. No story is too small for us because we know there is a human being behind it.

• Please support our public-interest journalism fund through once-off or monthly contributions. We understand that budgets are tight; hence, we accept as little as M10 ($0.62) through mobile money merchants: Mpesa 51863, Ecocash 120668, or Nedbank Account: 11990336867.