By demanding cash doctors are joining Govt in callously fleecing PSMAS member of last cent. By Patrick Guramatunhu

“Sooner or later the people will always get the government they deserve,” this is a universal truth as true, irrefutable and common sense as the second law of thermodynamic which simply put, states that “Heat will not flow from a colder body to a hotter body without the application of work (the imposition of order) to the colder body.”

 

After 36 years there is no doubt that Zimbabwe deserves this incompetent, corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF regime. Whilst it is true that this Zanu PF regime has been ruthlessly oppressive as it was incompetent and corrupt but by being incompetent it offered many, many opportunities for the people to end its tyrannical rule if the people themselves had, in turn, turned out to be equally incompetent.

 

Zimbabwe deserves this corrupt, incompetent and murderous Zanu PF regime and it was none other than the professionals who have let the nation down. Take the case of the case of the professional in the health sector for example; here is a typical case of how professionals have let the whole nation down.

 

36 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption has taken its heavy toll of the whole nation from the army of the 90% unemployed at the bottom of the economic ladder to the employed but poorly paid professionals like engineers and doctors right up to the ruling elite in government itself – the incompetent, corrupt and oppressive government we all do not want but have by default!

 

It turns out that the government has instructed its revenue collecting arm Zimra to demand full tax payment from doctors and others in the medical profession based on their billed earnings even if the doctors themselves have not been paid by patient’s medical aid society.

 

“The law requires doctors to render services to members of the public,” explained deputy health and child care minister Dr Adrian Musiiwa.

 

“When a patient produces a medical aid card, they’re expected to treat them and be paid by medical aid societies’ within a period of six months. If they don’t accept that they’re breaking the law.”

 

The Deputy Minister said government would force the health insurers to pay the doctors although in practice it has never done so and has instead continued to harass the doctors to pay their tax regardless. Some bills have not been paid for three years!

 

According to Dr Shhingai Bopoto the secretary general of Zimbabwe Medical Association (ZIMA), representing private doctors, hospitals and other medical service providers, its members are owed more than $220 million by various health insurance firms, with Premier Service Medical Aid Society (PSMAS), the government run society, being responsible for half the amount.

 

Government has been collecting the membership contribution without failure the reason why PSMAS has failed to pay the service providers is two-fold:

1. Government has not always paid PSMAS the collected membership subscriptions.
    
2. Corruption in PSMAS is rampant, as is the case with many other public owned and/or controlled institution; the society’s revenue has been soaked up in paying top managers scandalous exorbitant salaries and allowances, typically CEO Cuthbert Dube was paid $500 000 a month. Considering the majority of the civil servant, the members are paid $600 per month or less, it is little wonder the society had no money left to pay the service providers.
    

What is of greatest interest here is the response of ZIMA members to the political and economic reality affecting the nation. Of course they are aware of the basic facts of the decades of misrule by this Zanu PF regime that has produced the army of unemployed and the millions now living in abject poverty. If they had done nothing to protest the misrule because they had no peg on which hang their protest then being asked to pay tax from earnings the regime itself was withholding from them was the peg.

 

ZIMA members, in their collective wisdom, have decided not to protest but have continued to pay their taxes from their other sources of income. They are rich and can afford to pay tax even on income they do not have! Their protests would have helped rein in the insanity of the corrupt and oppressive Zanu PF regime and thus save the unemployed army, etc. from more suffering. The ZIMA members like so many others of the country’s many professions have done nothing to end the Zanu PF’s misrule because the really do not care about the suffering of others.

 

Indeed to underline their callous indifference to the suffering of others, ZIMA members have asked PSMAS members to pay up front for their medical needs although the ZIMA members know these civil servants will continue to have their membership subscriptions docked off their pay. ZIMA members know that we will all pay our last cent for our health needs even if that means paying twice over as is the case here.

 

In every society it is the professionals who play the leading role in shaping the destiny of the nation. In Zimbabwe intelligentsia who should be leading from the front in ending this corrupt and tyrannical Zanu PF dictatorship have, at best, stayed out of politics or, at worst, worked in cahoots with the regime to fleece every last cent out of povo.