The government has been toying with the idea of introducing a national health plan and a road accident fund, which on face value sound like noble projects.
Comment: NewsDay Editor
Due to high costs of medication, there are thousands of people without access to health facilities and the only way they can be treated is with government intervention.
Medical aid subscriptions are quite expensive and co-payments take health provision out of the reach of many people.
The same with road accidents, which have seen at least 50 people dying in the past couple of weeks, there is need for the government to come in to assist the injured and relatives of the deceased.
Some countries like Botswana have such a scheme and there is need for the government to look at how they are implementing it in that country.
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So far it is not clear how the government hopes to fund these schemes, but having an additional tax or levy would just be ridiculous.
Zimbabweans are already overtaxed and wallowing in poverty and a new tax would send many over the brink and the government has to think carefully and hard over this.
A new tax would be simple to implement, but it will be lazy and the call is on the government to come up with innovative ways of resourcing these schemes they are thinking about.
The government needs to reform the National Social Security Authority (NSSA), streamline it and make it more efficient and this will free funds, which could be the backbone of the national medical insurance scheme.
NSSA has become the embodiment of poor investments, with millions of pensioners’ funds held in closed banks or some other dodgy schemes.
Instead of pursuing too many deals, NSSA could reserve the money for the health plan, which would certainly be a better investment than some of the deals the authority has entered into.
The same goes with the road accident fund. The money should and can come from the revenue the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (Zinara) generates from tollgates.
In the past week, we have learnt of the obscene amounts Zinara executives get in allowances and surely there can be no justification for a $3 000 corporate allowance in this environment.
What this tells us is that there is a lot of money floating around within these parastatals, but it is poorly allocated and goes to executives rather than the people who need it the most.
There is no need for the government to think of new taxes or crack their heads thinking of how to fund these plans. Rather the emphasis should be on mopping up excess cash and using it to the benefit of Zimbabweans.