Gospel musician-cum pastor, Herman Chimusoro, who was recently acquitted on charges of swindling the police of $192 000, yesterday, said he was never paid for his work by the law enforcement agents.

Chimusoro, who is a pastor with Lighthouse Church, said although he was now a free man,  he was still struggling with the stigma associated with jail.

“I worked for at least 48 months setting up each Pass Out Parade, and each parade has rehearsals that last at least four days, and my sound system was set up there and I was present most of those days to set it up but I was never paid,” he said.

Chimusoro claims that he hires out his band equipment for $4 500 a day.

Efforts to speak to the police spokespersons Charity Charamba and Paul Nyathi were fruitless and the later did not respond to questions sent via sms.

“In December 2013, I came out of remand prison after a month of languishing in the filthiest environment I have ever been.

“During my work with the police, I trained sound engineers, cameramen, video editors and other personnel who needed to gain knowledge of some of my skills. I would either train them at the Staff College, at PGHQ or at my house where I have studio facilities and video editing facilities.

“I would make my camera equipment freely available to train cameramen and teach them editing and we filmed many pass out parades.

“I prepared for the Presidential Pass Out Parade of the 13th June 2013 and I filmed that one successfully with the cameramen that work with me and some of the ones I had trained among the police.

“I spent many days editing it. For this filming, I charged and I was paid, but for the rest, there was no compensation that exchanged hands,” he said.

Relieving his horrendous stay in remand prison, Chimusoro said he developed abscesses and the “doctor who attended to me told me he had to do an emergency procedure on me, as I risked losing my leg and he cut me open without anaesthetic to get rid of all the pus that had collected in huge amounts. It was a horrendous procedure and to this day I am still wondering why I went through that.”

“In my absence, they had unhindered access to my sound equipment which they wore out considerably due to careless handling by their personnel,” said Chimusoro.

“They would always organise transport to pick up sound system from my house but after functions, they would always tell me they had no transport to take it back.”