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Herald Correspondent

PSMI (Premier Services Medical Insurance) is one of the biggest medical insurance providers in Zimbabwe. Initially it primarily covered public servants nationwide but with time it opened up to everyone. Its foundation among civil servants ensured (and still does to this day) a stable financial base since it automatically deducts monthly premiums directly from Salary Services Bureau before civil servants get their pay.

It’s important to note that most civil servants ALWAYS get their salaries regardless of the nation’s economic woes. PSMI also demands cash upfront for the mysterious term referred to as “shortfall”— a mind boggling term since it applies even to provision of its own clinics’ medical services!

My focus however is not on PSMI but on one of its ‘subsidiary’ companies, EMRAS.

EMRAS provides ambulance services under the PSMI umbrella group. Clearly it’s a tough task for me to attempt to separate the branch from the root but I will try to do justice to the matter.

As it stands EMRAS employees have not been paid their May salaries.
These are the most frontline of all frontline workers, for want of a better expression. They are the first to attend every kind of medical emergency (Covid-19 patients gasping for breath, women in labour,  road traffic accident victims, suicide attempts, snake bite or gunshot or stab wound victims, name it) before the hospital ER crews take over. Daily they risk their own lives to save the lives of others . . . yet they have not yet been paid their salaries.

So far the employer’s silence on the matter is deafening.

The workers’ representatives appear complicit with the employer since they too are silent.

So far one should not be blamed for suspecting that workers’ representatives are nothing but the employer’s spies who betray the very colleagues they purport to represent by reporting complaints or any form of outspokenness.

So far, it’s clear that PSMI and EMRAS bosses pay themselves monthly on time- and this includes every last perk due them (wi-fi at home, DStv subscription, cellphone allowance, full tanks of fuel, lunches, private school fees for their kids, domestic workers salaries, holiday packages and airfares).

So far (as far as the Bulawayo EMRAS branch is concerned)

• Ambulance crews share three pairs of gumboots — the ones which are supposed to protect their feet or own shoes from infection. Let no one ask me how about twelve men and women can share protective footwear when they have different foot sizes and levels of personal hygiene!
• Never mind gumboots! Only a handful of workers (deemed special or the bosses pets) are issued with one pair of protective shoes annually. You should see the kind of personal shoes workers wear with their uniforms.

Only pictures can adequately describe the extreme risk these valiant men and women face daily as they save lives. Their personal shoes are not even sanitised at the beginning and end of each shift, nor after each call to avoid the transmission of disease from the workplace to their homes.

• Ambulance crews do not have proper sluicing equipment to clean up and sanitise ambulance interiors.

There are no ambulances reserved for ferrying patients with contagious diseases, separate from those with other medical emergencies.

Thus the risk of a patient with a non-contagious medical emergency multiplies a hundredfold whenever they call an ambulance used by one with an airborne infectious disease such as Covid-19.

• Ambulance crews are given a single face mask daily to use for the duration of their 8-10 hour shift. This is irrespective of what kind of calls they would have attended.

They are issued with a single ORDINARY face mask people — not an N95 mask but one so suspiciously thin that it’s function appears limited.

• Ambulance crews often share (hello!) protective gowns and aprons. (Hands up those of us who know that PPEs should not be shared!)
• Ambulance crews have NEVER been issued with face shields, despite the fact stated earlier that they are the first to come into contact with Covid-19 patients serious enough to require hospitalisation. Remember that these guys are given a single face mask to last a shift. How much more would they be issued with face shields!
• Whenever there is ZITF or the Harare Agricultural Show, EMRAS workers know that they will not get their salaries for that month on time.

Yet PSMI is (in)famous for exhibiting at both shows from extremely expensively designed stands for which they get awards annually!

So PSMI diverts workers salaries to some stupid publicity stunt which benefits neither their workers nor clients but for their own already bloated egos.

• In November 2021 civil servants were awarded US dollar denominated annual bonuses.

Now please can someone, anyone tell me how EMRAS bosses can be deemed sane since they are not even paying the peanuts due their workers for salaries, never mind annual bonuses!

These are not your ordinary civil servants; these are people who have fought FOUR waves of Covid-19 and are currently exposed to a fifth wave!

They did not get meaningful salary increases commensurate with the increased risk from the coronavirus.

Surely it should not be rocket science for their bosses to acknowledge that these champions deserve a special “thank you” (never mind the obligatory salaries which are not some form of philanthropic gift) for all they have done to keep the company afloat as the national economy took a devastating knock.

• EMRAS has NEVER offered its employees housing loans or such meaningful incentives to improve their welfare. So the national heroes who daily risk their lives, have to sneak into their rented rooms and cottages to avoid the landlords verbal abuse and evictions since they haven’t paid their rents as they don’t have salaries!

What are their families eating?
What are the workers themselves eating to make them strong enough to turn up for each shift?

• The fact that EMRAS has been setting up new branches all over the country is clear evidence that they are a viable business. They are making healthy profits.

Remember that they are a “subsidiary” of PSMI, which gets monthly premiums predominantly from civil servants salaries. So their income is guaranteed and withholding workers salaries isn’t justified.

It appears that EMRAS bosses “spin” workers salaries on the black market first and only get to pay them after making illicit profits.

• Please note that even though I referred to “ambulance crews”, I’m not excluding everyone involved in making the wheels of the company turn. There are dispatchers who often come into direct contact with drop-in clients and their ambulance colleagues as they return from each call.

Dispatchers handle filthy cash, share the dispatch desk, chair, desk top computer, phones etc. Without them the ambulance crews would cease to function since they would never know who to attend or where.

• Please note that EMRAS workers were paid their November 2021 salaries late (they were paid in mid-December 2021), their December 2021 salaries in January 2022.

So they watched other families feast during Christmas while they were battling through the Fourth Wave and their stingy employer induced poverty.

They didn’t get any kind of bonus either, despite all they have done throughout the year to meet and even to surpass their monthly (profit) targets.
Yet most of their bosses toured various local and international holiday resorts for Christmas — abusing the money which should have covered employees salaries, bonuses and gone towards improving service delivery to paying clients.

To date, there is a repeat of what has become a standard pattern at PSMI and EMRAS.

Workers were paid April 2022 on 15-16 May 2022. Their May 2022 salaries are yet to be paid. There is a spike in Covid-19 cases again in Zimbabwe since we are in the middle of a vicious winter. It has become another winter of PSMI workers’ discontent.

They have not paid their rentals, they do not have money to buy food yet food prices continue escalating daily, way beyond what even those who have been paid can afford.

They were offered a paltry ZW$6000, paid via electronic bank cards, as transport money “until they get paid May 2022 salaries and money which will be deducted thereof from salaries”!

Clearly that was never a clause in the workers contracts which ever hinted such madness, thus the employer is conjuring new and unjust working conditions as they see fit.

PSMI and EMRAS have turned a blind eye to the alarmingly high staff turnover. Every months tens of their employers are migrating to SA, UK and Australia. This is at the expense of paying contributors who faithfully pay their monthly premiums.

Both the government and parliament are silent on the matter.

The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health and Child Welfare have been altogether mum on the matter though they too are fully aware of it (as well as the general national fraud by medical aid societies).

Whoever has been spinning EMRAS workers salaries while treating them like proverbial slaves must face the music and be fired.

The workers are extremely demoralised — and justly so. Their demoralisation has the impact of risking the quality of medical emergency help for the whole nation since the workers won’t risk their lives for nothing.