VAYA stops home services for healthcare workers

DC lawyer, Thabani Mpofu was last night further detained at Rhodesville Police Station cells after the State failed

VAYA Zimbabwe yesterday stopped picking up health workers from home saying the transport support service was now available from the central business district to their workplace and back only.

The country’s largest transport and logistics group operated by Cassava On Demand Services, initially gave a 30-day transport relief to nurses, doctors and other public healthcare workers in August last year, following a protracted battle with government over poor remuneration.

Early this year the organisation offered free transport to public healthcare workers in a bid to cushion them from high costs of travelling to work during the COVID-19 period. The service was also part of measures to avert a crippling strike by nurses who had declared incapacitation due to poor salaries.

However, on Sunday VAYA issued a notice to withdraw the service.

The notice read: “It is with great dismay that I inform you that VAYA will no longer be able to carry you all from your locations to work anymore starting on Monday. However it will be ferrying you from town to the hospital and vice versa. We have come up with a plan which may or may not work for you which is to try and liaise with the owners of the kombis to come to an agreement whereby they can carry you from your locations but at your cost which can lessen your stresses of early morning to catch the Zupco.”

Company spokesperson Fungai Mandivheyi told NewsDay that the arrangement to ferry nurses from home was only temporary and at the request of major hospitals during level one of the coronavirus lockdown.

“We offered to ferry nurses to their places of work and back to a central point where they catch public transport and we are still doing that,” Mandivheyi said.

However, when the country was under level one lockdown, some to bring him to court yesterday, but went on to file fresh charges against him.

Mpofu, who represented MDC Alliance leader Nelson in the latter’s 2018 election challenge, was arrested on Monday for allegedly hospitals requested that we do door-to-door ferrying of critical staff to minimise service disruptions.”

“Zimbabwe has over 15 000 nurses and we ferried the majority of them, but we have since reverted to the usual system. There are between 1 500 to 2 000 doctors in the country and we ferry them to work and their homes.”

Zimbabwe Professional Nurses Union secretary-general Douglas Chikobvu, confirmed the development yesterday.

”It never rains but pours for nurses who have been enjoying the VAYA Shuttle but just from the blue a message of pain and misery emerged without any prior notice. No one had even budgeted for transport since we have been in safe mode, to and from workplace as we nicely and tirelessly worked to thwart COVID-19," he said.

“Unfortunately, a WhatsApp chat on all VAYA nurses platforms shuttered the morale of nurses who are now busy thinking how they will go to work in an environment where Zupco services are erratic and we are worried our fellow nurses will fall into hands of thieves and other abusers along their way home. The latest arrangement is a sterile makeshift arrangement without basis and lacks logic. How can they offer to ferry nurses a 1,5km drive while neglecting the thorny 10 plus kilometres nurses will come from to link to work. If the VAYA is feeling the heat, let them stop servicing nurses forthwith as their approach will diffuse nurses labour movements as we pursue sustainable means and ways to our welfare. We say VAYA bye, you came to subdue the chorus of nurses at a time when we were loaded to rise up and tell the employer the tune for a living wage and better working conditions,” he said.

Chikobvu said so far nurses in Gweru and Mutare had received the notices of withdrawal of the transport facility.

This development could trigger a crippling strike by nurses. defeating or obstructing the course of justice.

This was after he allegedly drafted an affidavit for a non-existent client, one Simbarashe Zuze.

It is further alleged Mpofu connived with a Joshua Chirambwe in the filing of a Constitutional Court challenge containing duplicated information from Zuze’s matter, thus defeating the course of justice.

The State had promised to bring him to court yesterday but according to his lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, they failed to do so, but went on to add a new charge against the

BEITBRIDGE police have arrested five of the six suspected armed robbers that early last week allegedly stripped an ex-soldier Dogeni Patsika of R53 000 in a violent pre-dawn robbery.

Reacting swiftly to leads, operatives stationed at Beitbridge Criminal Investigations Department netted Amos Zhou (43), Lovemore Simango (31) and Cuthbert Panganai at a car washing kiosk in Kadoma, where they fled to after the alleged crime.

According to documents shown to Southern Eye, police had already accounted for Juliet Isaka (32) and Dennis Muguzumbi, both of Dulivhadzimo township, who were apprehended soon after the robbery.

Detective Constable Tobias Chatikobo prominent advocate.

“They added a third charge that he connived with another lawyer to take a client from another firm, Samukange and Venturas legal practitioners and share the fees,” Mtetwa said.

“The new charge is not yet clear, but he will appear in court tomorrow at 8am,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) has said it had learnt with “profound concern of the arrest and detention” of Mpofu.

“It is not clear why Advocate Mpofu has been singled out for arrest in a case where the charges

apprehended Zhou, Simango and Panganai as they cleaned their getaway car in Kadoma, almost 500km away from the scene of crime.

Isaka provided the essential link. As for Muguzumbi, it was his slow legs that betrayed him when he was caught by his victim Patsika.

Muguzumbi is likely to face an attempted murder charge for stabbing Patsika in the head and back, following which the former was immobilised by a blow on the forehead which saw him tumble.

Patsika was transferred to Bulawayo where surgeons are expected to remove a piece of the knife lodged inside his skull.

On Monday last week, Patsika, a retired military instructor, gave housemate Isaka a lift from Chiredzi to Beitbridge. allege connivance with other legal practitioners. It is equally not clear why a specialised unit dealing with corruption cases has been deployed to deal with this ordinary criminal case. It is also unclear why the police are only acting now more than a year after the alleged offence was committed,” LSZ said.

“As a result of the foregoing, LSZ is anxious and concerned with the motive behind the arrest and detention. The society recognises and stands by the principle that a lawyer must never be associated with the cause of his client.” — Additional reporting by NewZimbabwe.com

Along the way, Isaka allegedly communicated with Zhou through text messages and WhatsApp chats bringing him up to speed on Patsika’s movements.

Isaka knew that Patsika, who runs a tuckshop at the house they both lodge rooms in Chiredzi, would be carrying money for his shop orders and planned the robbery, Chatikobo stated in a sworn affidavit in the court records.

Zhou set up a gang which trailed and robbed Patsika soon after he dropped Isaka at her house.

Police recovered R7 200, a knobkerrie, pepper spray and a golf club in the gang’s gataway Mercedes-Benz.

The gang members will appear again in court after a fortnight.