HYDERABAD: Financial indiscipline continues to haunt the Liaquat University Hospital (LUH) as recently deputy commissioner and assistant commissioner, who is also on the hospital’s procurement committee, raised serious questions in official correspondence over financial affairs of one of the largest tertiary care hospital of the province.

The official expressed reservations over LUH’s procurement involving multimillion rupees expenditures. Hyderabad deputy commissioner Fuad Ghaffar Soomro sought forensic audit of past five years of the hospital’s funds and City assistant commissioner Ashraf Sangri, member of the LUH’s procurement committee, had refused to sign documents for fresh tenders but surprisingly Sindh health department remained unmoved on the issue, said sources.

Mr Sangri had lately dissociated himself from the committee after conveying his reservations on procurement in a letter to the DC and the hospital’s medical superintendent.

The sources said that after cancellation of LUH’s tenders for diet and other articles in August 2022, the hospital had relied on quotation based supplies to keep the healthcare system going.

The tenders worth Rs912 million were cancelled by then MS Dr Hafeez Abro last year since exorbitant rates were approved for the purchase of items like flour for which Rs180 per kg was approved though later the LUH administration had tried to dismiss it a typographical error, said the sources.

Later, the Abro-led administration procured flour at Rs154.98 per kg and the MS wrote a letter on Sept 23, 2022, to the contractor to refund Rs481,500 on the ground that he had already been paid Rs30 more than the market rate, said the sources.

Even the Rs154 flour price in October 2022 was on the higher side considering the fact that even during the peak of ongoing flour crisis, the highest retail rate was reported at Rs130kg and that too in January 2023 though the government had fixed the price at Rs65 and then revised it to Rs75 per kg. “Rs481,500 were not refunded in cash but the hospital received flour in its place from the contractor,” said sitting MS Dr Shahid Islam Junejo.

Junejo told this reporter over phone that in fresh tenders he did not allow the companies that had earlier participated in tendering process without fulfilling requirements and the tenders were subsequently cancelled.

After the cancellation of tenders, the LUH procured required items worth more than the ceiling of Rs300,000 as laid down under the Sindh Public Procurement Authority Rules, drawing criticism from Mr Sangri, who objected to the procurement in huge quantities through quotation, according to his leaked letter dated Nov 2, 2022.

DC Soomro wrote a letter dated Nov 18 after the AC’s communication. “Undersigned observed many discrepancies, illegalities and unauthorised activities in violation of prescribed law/rules by procurement committee in the procurement proceedings…,” the AC wrote in his Nov 2 letter.

Mr Sangri told Dawn that he did not find the procurement process in accordance with rules and believed the procurement of supplies in bulk through quotations could not be done under the relevant rules.

He stated in his letter that two companies participated in “tender of rendered services” that created doubts over the rule of healthy competition. “The fact that strengthened my suspicion was that technical staff was being hired for a salary equivalent to a sanitary workers’ wage,” he said.

“An ICU technician, which is a BS-9 job, is paid Rs28,852 the same as being given to a sanitary worker,” he said.

MS Dr Shahid Junejo in his rejoinder to the AC’s letter referred to Rule 16 (1)(a) of SPPRA which allowed supplies through quotation to deal with emergencies. The AC, however, dissociated from the procurement process, prompting LUH to add more members to the committee with the permission of health secretary, according to MS Dr Shahid.

Following the AC’s letter, the DC also questioned LUH’s financial affairs in a letter dated Nov 18, 2022. Since the day he took over charge during the peak of Covid pandemic in 2020, he found working of LUH barely satisfactory and rather questionable, he said, adding that he ahd submitted a report to health secretary in June 2020 in this regard.

He said that he had been demanding forensic audit of LUH for the past five years as there were also reports that machineries in LUH were procured at exorbitant rates, higher than market prices.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2023