GUJRAT: District Coordination Officer Liaquat Ali Chattha has ordered a comprehensive probe into the affairs of the health department.

The DCO sprang into action after EDO (Health) Dr Sultan had been found involved in abuse of authority. On Thursday, the DCO barred Dr Sultan from attending his office and sealed his office for signing procurement agreement with companies without lawful authority. No one was immediately given the acting charge.

The district government has not been paying Rs260 million to various companies for procurement of medical equipment and medicines for the last more than three years due to alleged malpractice by the officials.

Sources told Dawn that the matter of the irregularities was of serious nature and the record of purchase by the health department in the last four years would be looked into by the two-member committee – EDO (Finance and Planning) Chaudhry Asghar and Additional District Collector Farooq Rasheed.

Sources revealed that the health department had purchased some 1.1 million tablets at Rs4.33 per tablet, which was much higher than the market price of only 33 paisa each. Similar was the case with the procurement of the machinery and medical instruments for the public hospitals, they added.

The DCO has now widened the scope of the inquiry as the purchase record of three and a half years will be probed because two former EDOs Dr Khalid Faiz and Dr Nusrat Riaz had faced the similar kind of inquiries in the procurement of machinery and medicines.

Dr Nusrat Riaz, the predecessor of Dr Sultan, had also been removed from the EDO office over corruption allegations. He was arrested by the Anti-Corruption Establishment on the allegation of embezzlement of Rs1.7 million when he was medical superintendent of the Aziz Bhatti Shaheed hospital in 2010.

DCO Chattha told Dawn that he had stopped the payment of Rs260 million to the companies that had supplied the medicines and machinery to the health department in violation of policy on rates. He said the charge of the EDO health office would not be handed over to any other official for the time being.

*Published in Dawn, July 5