With Aruna Asaf Ali Hospital’s recent exposé regarding the use of illegal sanitation material thus, involving the case of money laundering, sources have revealed that even other hospitals like Guru Teg Bahadur, lok Nayak and Deen Dayal Upadhyay have been doing the same thing.
As per the mandate given by the Capital’s Health Department, the sanitation of all Government hospitals has to be outsourced, which means that the sanitation staff, including the material used for cleaning, has to be bought and provided by the contracted company. However, these hospitals have been spending lakhs on buying sanitation material, which is technically not needed. Moreover, the material brought in is not even original as previously found in the FumiFloor solution scam of Aruna Asaf Ali Hospital, earlier in October.
The FumiFloor solution that was “faked” at Aruna Asaf Ali Hospital was actually bought based on a tender made by Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, a copy of which is with The Pioneer. As per the rates based on this tender, Aruna Asaf Ali Hospital bought the cans. The tender shows that GTB Hospital purchased 2,146 cans from 2010 to 2012 at the rate of Rs2,990 per can. The purchases were made from two particular pharmacies, namely, Shashi Medical Services and Balaji Healthline, reportedly owned by the same people. While it is clear that these pharmacies were making money by selling fake products, the question that arises is that what was the need for the hospital to buy the material in the first place when in 2009, the sanitation had been outsourced.
This goes to show that somewhere down the line, the officials in the hospital were running a scam with the pharmacy. However, no investigations into this case have been done by anyone till date.
Similarly, lok Nayak Hospital and Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital have been buying sanitation equipment when there is no need for it. Though, in an RTI reply, these two hospitals said that they had not purchased any sanitation equipment, highly placed sources have confirmed that purchases were made.
Dr Avinash Kumar, an RTI activist and doctor at the Babu Jagjivan Ram Hospital, has filed several complaints regarding this with the Health Secretary. “However, nothing has been done so far in this case,” he said.
Kumar added, “Though there is no documented proof of the corruption in sanitation equipment in lN Hospital and DDU Hospital, GTB Hospital records clearly show dirty handling of money. Almost Rs64.10 lakh has been laundered in the name of sanitation equipment. In Aruna Asaf Ali Hospital around Rs42 lakh has been spent on this.”
Earlier, medicines were the easiest way for doctors to make money, but when that came out in the open, the corruption trailed onto general store items like sanitation. However, the latest corruption has been visible according to sources in construction where “lakhs of rupees are being spent for minimal maintenance work,” informed a source.