MIANWALI, Nov 15: District Health Department officials have allegedly embezzled funds allocated for buying 15 mobile suction pumps.

The medical superintendent (MS) of the District Headquarters (DHQ) hospital invited tenders to buy machinery worth Rs15 million in June 2007 wherein 13 firms filed their offers.

A technical committee, consisting of senior health officials, approved the purchase of the equipment. As per rules all purchases exceeding Rs600,000 are to be approved by the district standing purchase committee. The committee approved the bidders and 15 mobile sucker machines costing Rs1.80 million were bought and payments made to the bidders by the incumbent MS of the DHQ hospital, although the plan was finalised by his predecessor.

Khalid Khan, who also filed his tenders, submitted an application with the health executive district officer (EDO) complaining about malpractice in the process. The EDO made an inquiry committee, consisted of District Health Officer Dr Nasir Malik, Dr Abdul Razaq Khan and Dr Hafeezullah Rana.

EDO (Health) Dr Guftar Ahmed says he is not concerned about the purchase process because all decision were made in his absence and Dr Farooq, the MS of the DHQ hospital, handled the whole process. He said when he received complaint he made an inquiry committee to ascertain the facts.

Member of the inquiry committee Dr Razaq said the machines bought were different from the required specification. He said fake trade marks of an Italian company had been affixed on some of the machines while most of the machines were without any trade mark. He said the machines were bought without any technical approval from the provincial authorities.

Dr Nasir Malik, chairman of the inquiry committee, said he had not submitted the report of the committee. He said a DTL (drug testing laboratory) report was necessary to make payment of drugs while approval of the local technical committee was necessary to but machinery. But medical engineers of the Health Directorate did not issue any such approval for these machines.

MS Dr Mumtaz said that he made payment for the sucker machines approved by his predecessor after an approval by the hospital doctors. He added he had stopped purchase of more machinery till the completion of the inquiry.

District Coordination Officer Babar Shafi, who is also chairman of the District Purchase Committee, claimed he had only supervised the meeting of the committee that approved the tenders. He said another inquiry would be conducted to make the things transparent. He said he would send the machine back if they were not up to the mark.

District Nazim Haji Obaidullah Khan Shadikhel said he was not aware of the scam.

Khalid Niazi, the complainant, says the tenders were not opened before the bidders on the given date. All bidders were told that successful bidder would be informed subject to negotiation with bidders. Mr Khan added he met Dr Farooq, the then MS, and asked about the bids. The MS said the bidding had been cancelled due to closure of financial year and tenders would be called again. He says an insider informed him that suction machines had been bought against Rs120,000 per piece, an mount more than his bid and also higher than the price fixed by the company. He says the inquiry committee gave him a comparative statement of rates offered by bidders which was not original. The statement bears no date and none of the nine signatories gave any date under their signatures.

“There are three hand written paragraphs by Tahir Shah, DHQ hospital head clerk, in the left corner of last page of the statement declaring my firm unregistered. It shows the statement was engineered to counter my complaint,” Khalid said.

The complainant added a new inquiry committee had been constituted by replacing Dr Razaq and Dr Tahir with two doctors of the DHQ hospital only to supersede the report of Dr Razaq.