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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Behind UP doctors’ killings, multi-crore health fraud by Teena Thacker

Behind UP doctors’ killings, multi-crore health fraud by Teena Thacker

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published Published on Jul 18, 2011   modified Modified on Jul 18, 2011
Lucknow, New Delhi : In April this year, Babu Singh Kushwaha resigned as Uttar Pradesh’s family welfare minister, taking moral responsibility for the scam involving misappropriation of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) funds in the office of Lucknow’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO) — a racket that was exposed after the murder of incumbent B P Singh.

The money involved was a few crores and the men arrested were a former CMO, a deputy CMO who later died in jail and some other lower-level employees.

But the rot, in fact, runs much deeper. A review of the NRHM in UP, conducted in May by a team of officials from the Centre, has revealed a number of wrongdoings in the period between 2009 and 2011, when Kushwaha was the minister.

With no accountability whatsoever, civil contracts worth Rs 610 crore were awarded without tenders; about Rs 1,000 crore was paid in advance to various agencies; no attempt was made to recover unspent funds adding up to several crores; and there was no monitoring and quality control.

The report has been available with the Mayawati government for some time now. “The rule-book was simply thrown out of the window,’’ admitted a senior official in Lucknow.

Chief Secretary Anoop Mishra said the state government has ordered inquiries by various departments and also sought a special audit of all districts.

The main findings of the central team:

* “No open tender system was followed to ensure competitive, cost-effective bidding,’’ says the report. It adds that there was no rationale in selection of implementing agency, and “the state did not exercise due diligence to ensure best value for money.” The contracts, adding up to Rs 610 crore, mainly involved the UP Processing and Construction Cooperative Federation and UP Labour and Construction Co-operative Association.

* While the normal practice is to make staggered payments, linked with the progress of work, the report says that the total amount was paid in advance in a number of cases. In all, about Rs 1,000 crore was paid in advance to the UP Processing and Construction Cooperative Federation, UP Project Corporation, Jal Nigam, UP Labour and Construction Co-operative Association and some other agencies.

* The review team was told that a programme implementation committee was responsible for monitoring all works, and the Director General (Family Welfare) was its member-secretary. But the team was not shown any minutes of its meetings. When the audit team raised the matter with the DG (FW), he said he was not aware of the committee’s existence. Also, very few engineers’ inspection reports were made available to the review team which found that no follow-up action was taken on the deficiencies noted at the time of handing over of buildings.

* The report says that “poor quality of work is a recurrent theme and the state has not undertaken any follow-up on the percentage of total work affected by construction quality consideration or remedial action taken.” None of the agencies were penalised despite failing to meet deadlines, and some were even awarded more work.

* Since the agencies did not complete work on time, they had large amounts of unspent sums after March 31, 2011. But the department made no attempt to recover that money. Just the interest lost on this account added up to Rs 4.24 crore in two years, says the report.

While a total of Rs 4,147 crore was released under the NRHM — the Centre provides 85 per cent of the funding — during these two years, a large amount was spent on civil works, like construction of hospitals, community health centres, primary health centres, sub-centres and their upgradation across the state.

Since the review was a random check, the report does not cover every aspect of NRHM.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/behind-up-doctors-killings-multicrore-health-fraud/818864/ Behind UP doctors’ killings, multi-crore health fraud by Teena Thacker


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