The secretary of the umbrella body of civil service unions has failed in his bid to block the forensic audit of Premier Service Medical Aid Society (PSMAS) after the High Court ruled his application did not meet the requirements of an urgent application and so the civil matter will now climb the roll in the ordinary way until it reaches a court hearing, almost certainly long after the audit is concluded.
Mr David Dzatsunga last week launched the High Court bid to
keep out the auditors until the court determined the validity of the audit now
underway at PSMAS.
Justice Munamato Mutevedzi on Wednesday struck the matter
off the roll on account of lack of urgency.
Urgent applications are for any prompt action that may be
needed to prevent irreversible damage to an applicant, such as an eviction, but
even if the audit is ever found to be invalid, the process will not damage
anyone.
Mr Dzatsunga, as the secretary of the Zimbabwe
Confederation of Public Sector Unions (ZCPSU), an umbrella trade union for all
trade unions that represent Government workers, sits on the board of PSMAS as
one of the three civil service representatives and was applying in his capacity
as a board member.
In his urgent application, Mr Dzatsunga wanted the court to
temporarily suspend the authorisation of the audit until the main application
filed at the same court on the same issue was determined.
In the main application, Mr Dzatsunga sought to nullify the
letters of April 4 and June 28, 2022, among other reliefs.
He was arguing that the letters were unlawful and violated
his constitutional rights because they were written without jurisdiction or
lawful authority.
The court application cited the Secretary for Health and
Child Care as party to the pending litigation.
The audit is taking place against the background that PSMAS
was allegedly deviating from its founding objectives, and had failed in
successive years to fulfil its core mandate of healthcare service provision.
Currently, the set-up of the organisation has a holding
company, Premier Service Medical Investments, a mining concern, a micro finance
operation and other entities.
When the subsidiaries were created, they were supposed to
be under PSMAS, but current proposals see attempts to set up a holding company
under a board of trustees with that holding company owning all concerns,
including PSMAS itself.
This means the PSMAS members, those who pay the
subscriptions, will no longer own and run their own society.
The position has caused the regulator of medical aid
societies, who can act in any medical aid society since they all have to be
registered, to order a forensic audit at PSMAS.
The three employer representatives on the PSMAS board, who
are appointed by Government as the employer and provider of 80 percent of
member subscriptions, have since raised the red flag after they were sidelined
on matters of the board.
The three are Deputy Chief Secretary in the Office of the
President and Cabinet Mr Martin Rushwaya, representing that office, Mr Pfungwa
Kunaka representing Treasury, which provides the bulk of the cash, and Dr
Tsitsi Choruma representing the Public Service Commission, the employer.
Civil servants recently blasted their unions for trying,
unsuccessfully, to blame the Government for the failures at PSMAS, which is
supposed to provide medical aid for civil servants, yet PSMAS is independent of
Government and belongs to its members, who are mostly civil servants.
The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Child
Care and the Pubic Service Commission who were cited as respondents in the
matter were opposing the application. Herald
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