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Sibongile Maruta Herald Reporter
Premier Service Medical Aid Society (PSMAS) has made significant in-roads in bringing back normalcy to its operations following a turnaround programme implemented over the past two years, the organisation’s managing director, Mr Tendai Kapunha, has said.

Addressing journalists after a media tour of the organisation’s new service centre that was established at a cost of $500 000 at the PSMAS head office in Harare on Wednesday, Mr Kapunha said the new service centre was part of their turnaround strategy.

“A turnaround is effective when everyone understands it and we want to include our stakeholders,” he said.

“Over the past one-and-a-half to two years, we have been putting in place new policies, procedures and ensuring that people adhere to them and obviously initiating a culture change so that we didn’t retain the same mind-set that would not have carried us to where we are.”

Mr Kapunha said there was need to preserve the fund to cater for all the needs of the members, although the organisation’s funds were being drained by high cost of drugs.

“We talk about preserving our fund to cater for all the needs of our members and the challenge we face is that a fund like ours is for a mutual society where the healthy subside the ill,” he said.

“There has been an increase in the cost of drugs, they shot up by 40 percent and local production is possibly less than 10 percent of what we require as a nation. This has left us in a quandary while subscriptions have not increased for five years and this has drained the fund.”

The new service centre offers members a number of services ranging from card replacements, new applications processing, health and fitness services.

It is equipped with Closed Circuit Television (CCTV), which monitors the premises to minimise cases of misconduct and theft, a queuing machine that makes it easy for members to log in as they come through, and an atrium (large open space in a building) where people sit while waiting for their number to be called out.

Mr Kapunha said they were expecting to complete the setting up of a family health centre in Beitbridge within the next eight weeks.