Company executives heartless custodians

Gwinyai Masaka
PRESIDENT Barak Obama is the leader of the world’s largest single national economy and the most prosperous nation in the world. The United States has an estimated Gross Domestic Product towering at a whopping $16,6 trillion as of June 2013. Barak Obama earns $400,000.00 per annum. While the French president François Hollande and his counterpart, the Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel, leading the two largest economies in Europe, both of whose combined GDP totals $6,1 trillion earn $345,000.00 and $280,000.00 per annum respectively.

All the above leaders run complex governing systems whose mandate they were given when they were voted into power. In comparison Zimbabwe’s GDP was estimated to be at $7,3 billion in 2013 and about 80 percent of the workers earn below the poverty datum line pegged at about $500. Inversely Cuthbert Dube the CEO presiding over PSMAS, renowned for turning around the fortunes of the then ailing public service medical aid association, earns about $2,8 million per year pocketing $2,4million more than President Barak Obama.
Even though Dube is credited with turning the fortunes of the then loss making PSMAS and building it into a solid and profitable organisation, however there is a moral limit to performance based entitlement and $2,4 million which is six times more than what President Barak Obama earns isn’t it, ridiculous and criminal? Those around him, like a pack of hyenas knowing his accomplishments would sing him praises, then push his salary beyond the ceiling as they surreptitiously increased theirs, blinding Dube to his moral obligation not to exceed certain limits.

PSMAS executives are by far not the only guilty ones in Zimbabwe, one doesn’t need to look far to notice the sleaze now endemic in Zimbabwe’s corporate world for example the loss-making ZBC has been paying obscene salaries to its executives. These bosses, instead of adding value to ZBC, chose to strip it until it slumped to its knees.

Apparently, the Public Service Medical Aid Society is failing to honour its obligatory payments to some hospitals, GPs, opticians, pharmacies and dentists thereby denying its members access to health services. A significant number of PSMAS members and their dependants are widows and orphans. Some of these widows and most if not all public servants are underpaid and in some cases consequently malnourished through no fault of their own.

On top of all this they are denied access to essential healthcare services because PSMAS has not paid service providers.This is tantamount to sentencing some of these civil servants or their family members to an early grave, since they will not access all essential healthcare services they desperately require.

In Psalms 94:6-7 Asaph says of the then rulers in Israel that “They slay the widow and foreigner, they murder the fatherless. They say to themselves the Lord does not see, the God of Jacob takes no notice”. In Psalm 50:21 the writer cautions that, in God-speak, “When you did these things and I kept silent, you thought I was exactly like you. I now arraign you and set my accusations before you”. God Almighty is displeased when those who are meant to be rulers and custodians become the predators that are heartless and brutal, abusing their positions of authority while neglecting the plight of those vulnerable under their care. PSMAS members, mostly employed in the public sector, earn at average of $3,600.00 per year from which among others, PSMAS contributions are deducted. If fleecing PSMAS’ purse is not criminal, then what is?

The good book warns us in Exodus 22 verse 22 where Moses says, “Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless”. Obviously the entire PSMAS executive board is made up of heartless custodians with predatory tendencies with no moral bounds. This lot as well as a lot of executives in Zimbabwe with an over-inflated sense of entitlement, should learn to do right as Isaiah in chapter 1 verse 17 advises “learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow” and Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 27 verse 19 declares, “Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or widow” and James in chapter 1 verse 27 says religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress . . .

In the aftermath of the banking crisis most people questioned the justification of high salaries and bonuses for executives especially bankers. Why is this culture of fat-cat salaries for executives prevalent in Zimbabwe with most of these bosses presiding over underperforming organisations within an ailing economy and no one does anything about it?

The economies in the West and East are many times bigger than that of Zimbabwe, with their executives not earning as much as their counterparts in Zimbabwe. Our Zimbabwean elites have no scruples; earning in excess of six times more than Presidents running entire nations. Shame on you! Shameless executives on rampage!

Gwinyai Masaka, a training consultant and part time chaplain at the University of Northampton with a teaching, healthcare services provision, sales, HR and management background.