National Blood Services Zimbabwe (NBSZ) has agreed to reduce the number of board members by letting go of old board members in an effort to shake off the remnants of bad publicity and restore confidence in the new board.
Newly appointed NBSZ board chairperson, Rodgers Matsikidze said some people already believe that they would not change anything because of some boar members who were carried forward from the previous board.
He,however, assured that they all have agreed that there is need to change the way they operate.
“The first challenge is to shake off the reminants of bad publicity and restore confidence that we are a different board,
“The second challenge relates to reduction of board members. Our election was under the old articles which calls each centre to have two representatives and as such the new article adopted at the last annual general meeting (AGM) have no transitional clause and we are legally stuck because we cannot say you we are dropping you and you are remaining,
“We are therefore working of putting in the transitional clauses and probably during the next AGM have them adopted. Once the current board’s expires we then ensure only nine members are elected in the board,” said Matsikidze.
He added that the bad governance issues which include unclear tenure of office timelines for board members which saw the previous board serving for close to two decades are to be changed and the maximum one can go now is two terms.
Matsikidze emphasized that serving for long periods of time has been stopped and will not be tolerated within the NBSZ board.
“Yes indeed NBSZ had members serving for very long periods of time. I can assure you that ended and will never be repeated. The maximum one can go now is two terms of four years which I feel are too long, the terms should have been two years,
“I believe that we need to cultivate a culture of serving. When you are there to serve you will not want to stay for long because you will be tired of working and need a rest hence it’s easy to allow others to take over. If you are there to be served or to enjoy power you will be definitely not keen to give others opportunity to serve,
“We have a huge task to accomplish particularly creating a culture of serving and servant hood. We are going to put all necessary legal framework to prevent members from serving for life. Eight years maximum which I feel is long.” he added.
Meanwhile, NBSZ has been pushing for free blood drive initiative and they believe that it will succeed if government kept on providing funding regularly and timeously as just witnessed recently.
