Full motion:
MOTION
AFFAIRS OF THE PREMIER SERVICE MEDICAL AID SOCIETY
HON. CROSS: I move the motion standing in my name that this House –
DISTURBED by the recent revelations disclosed by a forensic audit conducted into the affairs of the Premier Service Medical Aid Society;
ALARMED that many millions of subscribers’ funds have been used to pay senior staff massive salaries and other benefits;
WORRIED that this occurred at a time when the society was failing to pay service providers and other creditors on time;
FURTHER WORRIED that the society’s members were unable to inter alia access medical services, get treatment and purchase drugs;
CONCERNED that among those affected were civil servants who already suffer from the inability of the State to pay reasonable salaries and other emoluments;
NOW, THEREFORE, this House calls upon the Executive to:
(a) Immediately set in motion processes for the prosecution of all those who benefited from this scandal;
(b) Take remedial action to cover the funds that were paid to those individuals who were unjustly enriched;
(c) Investigate the role of the board of the society that was in charge of the affairs of the society at the time of this abuse of funds and if found culpable, that prosecution be extended to former board members; and
(d) Review present remuneration policies of the society and bring them in line with current Government policy.
HON. MARIDADI: I second.
HON. CROSS: Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a motion on a subject which has received considerable attention in the media in the past six months and something which shocked the country at large. I rise because absolutely no effective action seems to have been taken by the Executive to address the issues which were raised in the various reports that have been in the media.
I want to pay tribute to The Sunday Mail for its aggressive and honest exposure of several major incidents in Government and the way in which Government has been managing public funds and the report which they carried in a Sunday newspaper on the Premier Service Medical Aid Society is one of those. I raise this because in my view, white collar crime of this nature has become a serious matter in Zimbabwe. We have seen the collapse of banks. Since 2013, ten commercial banks have gone into liquidation. The worst of these was Interfin where over US$100 million of shareholders and depositors’ money was taken by the directors and absolutely no prosecutions have happened as a consequence. I do not believe that even the report on Interfin has been tabled with the relevant Committees in Parliament or with the House itself.
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