MULTAN: The Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) has lodged another case of alleged corruption against Medical Superintendent Nishtar Hospital Dr Ashiq Hussain Malik and others.

This time a first information report has been lodged by the ACE Multan under sections of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and the Prevention of Corruption Act 1947 for committing irregularities in supply and purchase of medicines. The FIR has been lodged on the basis of two different inquiries.

The first inquiry was based on a report of ACE additional director investigation Adnan Asif Bhutta and additional director Abdul Latif Khan which said that the senior doctors of the Nishtar Hospital had doubled the demand of medicines unnecessarily, inflicting a loss on the exchequer.

The suspects had allegedly inserted duplicate demand by enhancing original quantity of IV sets from 5,68,150 to 10,00,000 (one million). Dr Malik, additional medical superintendent (pharmacy) Dr Siddique Saqib and pharmacist Mrs Amina Arif were held guilty of the charges.

On Aug 24, 2017, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) seized a stock of the IV sets besides six other items of medicines from a local market with government stamp ‘not for sale’ on them. The maximum requirement of the IV sets for the Nishtar Hospital was 2,00,000 annually. However, the hospital had decided to procure 5,68,150 IV sets for the financial year 2016-17 but again the suspects increased the number to one million during the procurement process, in sheer violation of the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules.

The suspects further issued more demand up to the extent of 15pc quantity for the issuance of supply order for same IV sets. Later, the supply order (15pc) was got issued and the hospital received the items the total amount for which was stated to be Rs1.9m. Consequently, the quantity purchased was so huge that the hospital ran into trouble to make proper storage.

The report was compiled by former MS Nishtar Hospital Dr Abdul Rehman Qureshi who replaced Dr Malik in March 2017 and scrutinised the purchase record for 2016-17.

In the first week of October 2017, Dr Malik and Dr Saqib were suspended while they were working as chief executive officers health in Multan and Khanewal, respectively, after the FIA and ACE probes held them responsible for theft of medicines and their unjustified purchase.

The ACE scrutinised 17 medicine items that were purchased in huge quantity. Both the officers were not only suspended, disciplinary action was initiated against them under the Punjab Employees Efficiency, Discipline and Accountability (PEEDA) Act 2006. Both the doctors were reinstated after the inquiry constituted on the direction of the chief minister cleared them of the allegations; however, ACE Multan Director Amjad Shoaib Tareen sent recommendations for lodging of the FIR against the suspects after they were found guilty in the initial probe.

Another inquiry against Dr Malik and other suspects was initiated by the ACE Multan for allegedly causing Rs5.1m loss to the national exchequer while serving at the Nishtar Hospital.

In the ACE report, it was revealed the loss incurred to the government included Rs2.4m in terms of provision of security services, Rs0.6m in supply and installation of one-way tyre buster, Rs0.43m in the special repair of the road from Gate No 3 to Residence No 4 of Nishtar Medical College and Rs1.72m in awarding 25 special repairing works to a single contractor.

Earlier, an FIR was already lodged under various sections of the PPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act 1947on Sept 4 with the ACE Circle Muzaffargarh against Dr Malik and others. On Nov 12, Dr Malik was posted as MS Nishtar Hospital again.

Published in Dawn, December 3rd, 2018