Minister hails suspension of Mpilo top brass

HEALTH and Child Care minister David Parirenyatwa has commended the Mpilo Central Hospital board for suspending the heath institution’s top brass to facilitate investigations into corruption allegations.

HEALTH and Child Care minister David Parirenyatwa has commended the Mpilo Central Hospital board for suspending the heath institution’s top brass to facilitate investigations into corruption allegations.

by MELODY CHIMHAU

Mpilo chief executive officer, Lawrence Mantiziba, operations director Duduza Regina Moyo, finance director Charles Govo and chairperson of the central buying unit Mxolisi Sibanda were suspended recently after they were implicated in an alleged the tender scam.

Parirenyatwa, who toured Mpilo Hospital on Thursday, said the suspension of the four was necessary to root out corruption in government hospitals and other health centres.

“It is important that we refurbish such hospitals once in a while but a good infrastructure also needs a good management,” he said.

“That is why we now have an acting CEO because there were some measures which were taken to reinstate order in this Hospital. The board did a good job by looking at the problem of widespread corruption at Mpilo and coming up will solutions for the good of this hospital.”

Parirenyatwa added: “We should remove corruption around us and also do things properly.”

He indicated that a second “extensive” audit will be undertaken at Mpilo to unravel many other suspected irregularities which could have bled the institution of millions of dollars.

A preliminary audit showed one of the largest referral hospitals in the country was losing millions of dollars through alleged tender scams.

There was drama recently after the Mpilo Hospital board was forced to abort a meeting to plan logistics for the second extensive audit following bomb scare in what insiders said an attempt to block the probe after the hospital’s accounts offices were burgled and the keys to the offices of the suspended executives stolen.