November 22, 2001	Thursday	Ramazan 6, 1422

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MULTAN, Nov 21: Equipment worth Rs70 million have reportedly been missing from the store of the provincial health department.

Equipments like vaccine carriers, cold boxes, electricity regulators, ice boxes and deep freezers were supplied to the provincial health department to run the Expanded Programme for Immunization on various occasions during the last couple of years.

Sources said the equipments were received by the Director-General Health Services office when Dr Saeed Ahmad Qureshi was heading the provincial health department.

They said the official record showed that the equipment had been distributed among 34 districts and other wings of the provincial department ‘through fake receipts.’

A senior health official who recently held an inquiry into the alleged misappropriation of the equipment had confirmed irregularities along with ‘mysterious’ disappearance of 10 million syringes from the main warehouse of the Punjab health department in Lahore.

On receiving a complaint, the Anti-Corruption Establishment director reportedly ordered registration of a case. But a strong lobby in the provincial health department has removed the complaint from ACE as one of the brothers of one of the main suspects of alleged irregularities is serving at a senior post in provincial law department.