PESHAWAR: An audit report has found irregular release of grant-in-aid to four charity organisations working for provision of free blood and its products to thalassaemia patients in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The report said that an amount of Rs33.166 million was paid to the welfare groups during the financial year 2023-24. It has recommended action against the people involved in irregular grant.

Official sources told Dawn that all the organisations, which received grant from health department, were giving blood to patients, especially those affected with thalassaemia as there was no government programme for such patients and people banked on such private outlets for transfusion on monthly, quarterly and biannual basis. Some chronic patients also required transfusion twice and even thrice a month, for which they came to get blood and stay alive, they said.

However, Directorate of Auditor General Khyber Pakhtunkhwa during audit of caretaker-era found that the grant has been given unlawfully.

Officials of health dept say matter being investigated

According to the report, the conditions for expenditure of grant is that it will be utilised on the activities pertaining to welfare of patients such as blood bags purchase, camps and chemicals etc and the relevant organisation will maintain proper account for the grants provided by the government.

As per law, the organisation receiving the grant will provide quarterly expenditure statement to health and finance departments, respectively. The report said that at the end of each fiscal year, financial statements of grant recipients should be audited internally as well as externally.

It said that that Health Care Commission (HCC) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa may inspect the organisation not less than thrice in one year and the said report should be shared with health and finance departments accordingly.

During annual audit of the accounts record of Directorate General Health Services Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for the financial year 2023-24, it was observed that a sum of Rs33.166 million was paid to various philanthropist institutions in health sector as grant-in-aid during the period of interim government, it said.

However, further scrutiny of record revealed that the institutes failed to provide the inspection report from HCC as required under the rules. Therefore, audit held the payment of grant to the organisations as irregular.

The report said that the lapse occurred due to violation of standard operating procedure of health department for utilisation of grant-in-aid, which resulted in irregular payment. Auditors have pointed out that they contacted relevant officials in health department but didn’t receive any response in this connection. Therefore, they recommended investigating the matter and taking appropriate action.

The organisations, which received the grant, included Frontier Foundation, Hamza Foundation, Rukhsana Mother and Child Hospital and Fatimid Foundation. Frontier Foundation Peshawar received Rs18,333,000 as grant, Hamza Foundation Peshawar received Rs833,500, Rukhsana Mother and Child Hospital Peshawar got Rs9000, 000 and Fatimid Foundation got Rs5,000,000.

Officials in health department said that the matter was being investigated as per recommendation of the audit report. They said that those organisations enjoyed good reputation as they provided free blood to at least 50,000 thalassaemia patients for which government had no facility and therefore provision of grants to them was not illegal but the department hadn’t fulfilled the requirements.

Also, the organisations failed to share financial statements and reports of HCC with the department.

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2025