The Parliamentary Committee on Public Accounts has declared that barter trade and non-cash transactions should be banned as a form of payment at Government hospitals, saying this was prejudicing the country of much needed revenue.
Effects of this declaration are likely to be felt in rural areas where patients sometimes find it hard to access cash since dollarisation of the economy early last year.
Most health institutions are not receiving adequate funding from the government and had resorted to accepting food hampers as payment, with these in turn used to cater for patients who would have been admitted.
Shamva, Mvurwi, and Mutawatawa District Hospitals were fingered as being the main culprits in engaging in barter trade and accepting food items as a mode of payment.
Ministry of Health and Child Welfare permanent secretary, Gerald Gwinji told parliamentary portfolio committee that the system of accepting food stuffs had been inherited from mission hospitals at the end of 2008 at a time when the ministry could no longer support its institutions.
“In his submission to the committee [he] highlighted that the practice of payment of hospital bills in kind came about in 2008 when communities could not get or access foreign currency and as a result offered to pay in kind,” reads the report.
The report details public accounts for 2009 after an audit by the Comptroller General of public accounts and was tabled before parliament last month.
It is reported that Shamva and Mvurwi had devised a standard system of costing the food stuffs do the public could not be short changed.
“The food items offered for payment were mainly maize, beans and in the case of St Albert, animals,” the report continues. “The collected food items will be used for feeding in patients.”
Despite protestations from provincial health executives that the practice was good and benefited both the health institutions and the patients, the parliamentary portfolio refused to budge, maintaining that the practice should be outlawed.
Other ministries that were fingered in engaging in barter trade were Energy and Power Development, Transport, Communications and Infrastructure Development and Foreign Affairs.
Since the advent of the use of multiple currencies, rural populations have resorted to barter exchange, foreign currency is largely inaccessible.
This has seen them resorting to barter trade for public services such as education, health and transport.