KWEKWE City Council has reportedly failed to remit its employees’ medical aid contributions for the past two-and-a-half years, putting the health of its workers at risk of being turned away at health institutions.
BLESSED MHLANGA
A recent internal audit revealed that the local authority last remitted the contributions towards the end of 2011 although it has kept deducting the money from employees’ salaries.
“Council contributions arrears not yet remitted amounted to $669 352,20 and $4 145,40 for junior and senior staff respectively as at February 28, 2014 . . . this state of affairs was crippling the affairs of the medical aid society,” part of the audit read.
Audit manager Morris Mutema noted in the report that the medical aid society had in turn failed to pay service providers thereby putting employees at risk of being turned away from health institutions.
“They observed that as at February 28 an amount of $40 549,91 was being owed by the medical aid society to service providers and some of the outstanding amounts were more than 120 days old. As a result, some of the service providers were now reluctant to offer services to Kwekwe City Council Medical Aid members,” the report read.
Contacted for comment yesterday, council audit committee chairman Weston Masiya said: “There is a payment plan which I cannot discuss in the Press, but I can tell you that as a committee, we are worried over these huge debts as council, especially these remittances which are deducted from employee salaries already.”
Masiya expressed concern that council executives were demanding new vehicles for themselves at a time the local authority was struggling to clear its debts.
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“If you hear the debate on vehicles, you would not even think we are struggling with these debts.”
