THE Grain Marketing Board (GMB) has expanded its staff medical scheme, Agricultural Medical Aid Society (AgriMed), to cover farmers’ medical needs.

BY SHARON SIBINDI

GMB managing director, Jabulani Dhlakama told Southern Eye that AgriMed transformed from being an in-house medical aid society to an open house medical society.

“The difference being in-house and open-house society is that when you are inhouse, it means you are a medical aid for the staff, you can’t get people outside GMB to have membership. This means that it is now open, but still restricted to people in agriculture,” he said.

“We have scheme number one — Grain Marketing Board Medical Aid scheme — which has six packages and covers everyone in the GMB.”

He said they also have Murimi/Umlimi farmers medical aid scheme which has six products.

“So anyone who is farming goats, cattle, chickens, cotton, tobacco they being to the Murimi/Umlimi farmers’ medical aid scheme. We also have the student medical aid scheme which covers the eight agricultural training collages in the country,” he said.

“The fourth scheme is for fish and crocodile farmers, which we call fisheries and aqua medical aid scheme. We have another for those in wildlife farming and we call it wildlife and conservancies scheme. We then have sugar cane medical aid scheme and the last one is Timber and plantations medical aid scheme.”

Dhlakama said GMB seeks to give wellness, financial peace of mind, productivity and economic prosperity to the farmers.

“Our purpose is to fund wellness in agriculture. What am I saying is, a healthy person is a highly productive person.”

Dhlakama said their medical aid also had a funeral cash benefit and a pension fund.

“That cash plan component is underwritten by our strategic alliance partner which is CBZ. On top of that, we have what we call farmers’ preservation fund, which is like a pension for the farmer,” he said.

GMB also offers farmers global travelling insurance cover.

“We also have the farmer’s hospital cash plan which looks at the farm workers should they get injured on the farm, then the hospital cash plan will take care of that.”
Dhlakama said they are working with Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union, Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers’ Union, traditional leaders and others in their campaign so as to reach rural farmers.