PSMI Workers Camp At Parkview Hospital Over Salaries
Hundreds of Premier Service Medical Investments (PSMI) workers resolved to camp at Parkview Hospital in Harare to force their bosses to pay their salaries.
PSMI workers who have not received salaries since November camped on Friday.
The Zimbabwe Independent reports that poor management, and sub-economic subscriptions, are some of the factors causing the crisis that now threatens to ruin the mass market medical aid firm.
Munyaradzi Nharaunda, a PSMI national workers committee member, told The Zimbabwe Independent that the workers resolved to camp at the hospital to force the employee to pay their salaries. He is quoted as saying:
Most PSMI workers are tenants.
We stopped receiving housing allowance in June last year. Many of our members are being kicked out of their lodgings. Many have had to plead with relatives to keep their properties, while they demand their dues here.
I know one member of staff who left his property at PSMI offices in Marondera.
PSMI is a unit of the government-run Premier Service Medical Aid Society (PSMAS), a firm that occupied an important space in Zimbabwe’s medical aid system until it ran into turbulence a few years ago.
Many blame mismanagement for the crisis, and as late as Monday, insiders said a lot of bad things were being swept under the carpet.
PSMI has one of the biggest memberships on the domestic market, most of them civil servants.
Observers said the crisis exposed the Ministry of Health and Child Care’s failure to save PSMAS.
Health expert, Josephat Chiripanyanga said the medical sector was concerned that PSMI’s collapse would be disastrous.
Economist Prosper Chitambara said the collapse of PSMI means people have to resort to out-of-pocket financing to access health services.
Public health activist and executive director of the Community Working Group on Health, Itai Rusike cast the blame on weak regulation of medical aid societies.
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