Last Updated on June 2, 2021 at 8:33 pm
A confidential report sent by then Additional Director Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) Srinagar and addressed to Deputy Secretary Vikas Verma (LG’ References Monitoring Cell GAD) has disclosed that the institution purchased beds for COVID patients in bulk without any application from the user departments and inspection committee had raised questions on their specifications.
During the outburst of Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, SKIMS made Infectious Disease Department (IDD) having 50 beds capacity operative for Covid-19 patients but acquired 200 beds and bedsides lockers for it.
Surprisingly, the order was placed on 29th April 2020 but shipment was brought on 15th April 2020 from a local company M/s Dipanshu Surgical Industries. One of the shipments, vide e-way bill 421116568736 – 16/04/2020, Invoice no 312/313 – 15/04/2020 was transported through lorry no HR-03-8Y-9658.
Later Additional Director of the institution in report said that no requisition was made from user departments for purchase of 200 beds and bedside lockers for Covid-19 patients.
As per reports, procurement of the beds was not made from the funds meant for the Covid but were taken from University funds. The budget meant for Covid-19 was not taken into account, rather payment was done from university funds as per the statement dated 29.01.2021 provided by Director Finance SKIMS. These purchases were made by director ignoring the NIT protocol and breaching the financial code.
As per records, 4 quotations were received by SKIMS by various agencies for supplying these items and L1 supplier was chosen by the Committee (i.e. M/s Al Haram Engineering)
After that SKIMS purchased 200 No’s of beds and bedside lockers for an amount spent of Rs. 13, 11, 361 from the supplier ignoring the protocol of NIT and breached the guidelines provided by the financial code.
Also reports read that if an emergency emerged for purchasing of beds for pandemics, it should have been the duty of authorities to procure only legitimate quantities of beds than to purchase the beds in large quantities (i.e. 200) which was not required.
