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The purchase of a 12-roomed house for US$1 million in the neighbouring local government area of Ruwa by the Harare City Medical Aid Society was even condemned by Mayor Jacob Mafume although so far no action has been taken to reverse the deal or sell off the property.
It also came to light that the medical aid society covering the 9 000 staff of the Harare City Council has been buying other properties and usually without insisting on title deeds.
The excuse given was that the medical aid society wanted the Ruwa mansion for a clinic. Perhaps the city council does have a lot of staff who prefer to live outside city limits in a better run council area, but it still does not make much sense to have a clinic for Harare City staff in Ruwa.
And even if the medical aid society wanted a major clinic for municipal staff and their families, buying a luxury house in a low-density suburb does not seem like a sensible business decision or a sensible location, since few city employees live in such suburbs.
A really first class clinic could be built from scratch for a lot less money, and have the advantage of being properly designed and sized for the work without the need to adapt a large house with all the alterations required.
Perhaps it would be useful for the Harare City medical aid society to have a dedicated clinic with on-call doctors for staff and their dependants.
Several medical aid societies with large membership have found that converting from fee for service coverage to employing their own medical staff on salary can cut costs, with most medical treatment not needing specialist services that can still be outsourced.
But we are certain that there has been no debate among council workers over such an arrangement, with the different levels of subscriptions being outlined, and certainly such a dedicated clinic would not be outside Harare city in a different local government area, but rather reasonably central and easy to access for all council staff and their dependants.
Many will suspect that the deal was done corruptly for someone’s personal advantage and the excuse of a clinic was simply used to paper over what should have been a major investigation. Municipal staff of Harare City Council obviously need to bring their medical aid society to book and demand explanations.
Certainly their money has been wrongly and badly spent and an investigation might reveal criminal intent, although there is certainly reckless negligence at the very best.
The commission of inquiry into Harare City Council chaired by retired judge Justice Maphios Cheda is still gathering vast quantities of the most damaging evidence of corruption, maladministration, favouritism, serious padding of benefits for the top layer of staff and exceptionally poor treatment of most of the workforce who have to do the work and face the public.
While staff are rarely paid on time, and sometimes the delays can be long, the top tier of town clerk and directors have still been getting their luxury SUVs and holidays in SADC and the Victoria Falls for themselves and their children, with the town clerk, or acting town clerk, or as at the moment both, allowed paid-for holidays outside Southern Africa.
The council assets, and we have this from those in the city treasurer’s department who have to make payments, seem to be at the beck and call of councillors and top officials, regardless of the need to find the equivalent of around US$2 million a month to pay all staff and the larger sums needed to maintain services and make sure the council staff have the right equipment to do their job.
Harare City is the second largest entity in Zimbabwe after the central Government. While the Second Republic has been upgrading services, and for that matter even paying staff properly on time on the agreed pay days for each group of workers, the city council has been failing badly.
Yet the rates and other charges should be more than enough to pay staff, buy water treatment chemicals, keep garbage trucks in repair and replace them when they finally wear out, keep fire engines and what used to be such a good ambulance service that no private service could compete.
And there would still be enough over in a properly run council to maintain sewage systems and treatment plants and pay for the regular extension of water works and sewage treatment works.
All this should be routine, rather than seeing a council and its top officials seeing the money that residents pay in being used as a very large cookie jar by councillors and top officials rubbing each others’ backs and passing resolutions and creating contracts that siphon money from other workers and the proper services to themselves.
Perhaps these resolutions and the contracts and even the mess in the medical aid society are legal, in the sense that those in authority have authorised them.
It is possible to do this sort of thing legally even if so much has to be kept secret to avoid ratepayers and staff exploding in anger.
One major advantage we are now seeing from the investigating commission is that so much that councillors and officials wanted to keep secret is coming out into the open, and we are able to see what has been going on, although we bet there are still secrets that have been kept.
It seems that there are people who work for the city who have a conscience and who have been willing to tell all.
In any organisation there will be those who do good quality work for a fair day’s pay, and these are the people who we will need to be pushed up the ladder in Harare, since they have the expertise to fix the problems given some sort of decision making process that allows them to do the work and channels the resources away from perks and other dodgy deals to where they are supposed to go.
Online Reporter