HARARE - Lawmakers yesterday demanded that former Premier Services Medical Aid Society (PSMAS) chief executive officer Cuthbert Dube be prosecuted for misappropriation of clients’ funds.
Dube and his PSMAS board chairperson Meisie Makeletso Namasasu were relieved of their duties on Monday by the company board.
Ruth Labode, non-constituency MP and chairperson of the Health and Child Welfare parliamentary portfolio committee, noted the decision of the PSMAS board to retire the CEO with possible benefits, but recommended that “he must be prosecuted for theft or misappropriation of member’s funds.”
The legislators also called for a probe into the donations that were made to Zimbabwe Football Association (Zifa) by Dube, who is the football mother body’s chairperson and Mavis Gumbo, a PSMAS senior staffer, Zifa board member and chairperson of women’s football.
“In light of these anomalies, the committee calls for a government to order a forensic audit into PSMAS funds’ handling, given its public service interest and the numerous donations to entities like Zifa, which Dube and Gumbo made,” Labode, who is a medical doctor by profession, said.
“The committee notes with concern the inter-linkages and recurrence of similar names like Cuthbert Dube and Mavis Gumbo in PSMAS, Zifa and Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC Holdings) all being troubled institutions with reported gross abuse of public funds by top management,” Labode said.
Labode was supported by Peter Mataruse, MP for Chinhoyi and Aldrin Musiiwa, MP for Chakari, who are also medical doctors. They spoke passionately on the challenges being faced by PSMAS members in accessing medical aid and its inability to pay medical suppliers.
The committee also recommended that the entire PSMAS board be blacklisted from sitting on any public institution’s board.
Dube was reportedly earning a basic monthly salary of $230 000, with other eight senior directors earning $60 000 each per month, at a time the organisation owed service providers $38 million in unpaid bills.
The embattled medical aid society mainly caters for civil servants and uniformed forces who make monthly subscriptions.
