Just when you think local government cannot get more dysfunctional, we get a masterclass in grift. Paramedics for the Harare City Council are under a microscope for allegedly stealing ambulance fees. The basic charge for a city ambulance ride is thirty U.S. dollars. These crews are supposed to collect that from patients and hand it over. Instead, investigators think they are pocketing the cash and cooking the books to hide it. They especially target people who cannot pay the full fee upfront, which is most of their clientele. Council policy does allow for later payment, but that system is being gamed. The paramedics take a partial payment, do not give a real receipt, and later submit a fake one to the city under a made-up name and address. This leaves real patients getting harassed for money they already paid, while the city chases ghosts.
The scam surfaced because regular people started getting pursued for debts they did not owe. One woman in Waterfalls, named Chiratidzo Hungwe, had council workers show up looking for a patient named Vimbai, who supposedly lived at her address and owed thirty dollars. No one by that name lives there, and no ambulance was ever called. Another case in Glen View involved a man named Marshal. His family paid twenty dollars for a trip when he was sick, stressed, and never got a receipt. The council later came after them for the full thirty, threatening debt collectors. With no proof of payment, they coughed up the cash again. A fifty-seven-year-old Epworth resident, Gracia Ngwerume, paid eighteen dollars upfront for her pregnant daughter-in-law. When she went to settle the rest, the council told her the receipt she held was counterfeit. The fake paper trail is causing chaos.
But wait, there is more. These same crews are also reportedly siphoning fuel from the ambulances and selling it cheaply on the side. To cover that, they again use phantom receipts for fictitious patient transports. An insider says the revenue collapse is insane. The council should be pulling in around twenty thousand dollars a month from these services. Currently, they are getting less than fifteen hundred. That is a yearly haul of maybe eighteen thousand instead of a potential two hundred forty thousand. A preliminary internal probe points to a coordinated syndicate, not just a few bad apples, with cover-ups and a total lack of oversight, letting it all happen. The alleged ringleaders are known to investigators but have not been named publicly yet. The whole operation makes you wonder if the only emergency these ambulances are responding to is their crew's personal cash flow problem.
The scam surfaced because regular people started getting pursued for debts they did not owe. One woman in Waterfalls, named Chiratidzo Hungwe, had council workers show up looking for a patient named Vimbai, who supposedly lived at her address and owed thirty dollars. No one by that name lives there, and no ambulance was ever called. Another case in Glen View involved a man named Marshal. His family paid twenty dollars for a trip when he was sick, stressed, and never got a receipt. The council later came after them for the full thirty, threatening debt collectors. With no proof of payment, they coughed up the cash again. A fifty-seven-year-old Epworth resident, Gracia Ngwerume, paid eighteen dollars upfront for her pregnant daughter-in-law. When she went to settle the rest, the council told her the receipt she held was counterfeit. The fake paper trail is causing chaos.
But wait, there is more. These same crews are also reportedly siphoning fuel from the ambulances and selling it cheaply on the side. To cover that, they again use phantom receipts for fictitious patient transports. An insider says the revenue collapse is insane. The council should be pulling in around twenty thousand dollars a month from these services. Currently, they are getting less than fifteen hundred. That is a yearly haul of maybe eighteen thousand instead of a potential two hundred forty thousand. A preliminary internal probe points to a coordinated syndicate, not just a few bad apples, with cover-ups and a total lack of oversight, letting it all happen. The alleged ringleaders are known to investigators but have not been named publicly yet. The whole operation makes you wonder if the only emergency these ambulances are responding to is their crew's personal cash flow problem.
