PUTRAJAYA: The government incurred RM13.07mil in losses over the procurement of 93 defective ventilators for Health Ministry facilities in 2021, says Auditor-General Datuk Seri Nik Azman Nik Abdul Majid.
He added there was no warranty provided for the ventilators.
“It depends on the ministry whether to take action or not as there was no contract (for the procurement),” he said while presenting the Series 2 of the 2021 Auditor-General’s Report at a press conference on Thursday (Feb 16).
“It was procured in a cash-and-carry manner whereby it was bought, tested, upgraded and utilised. It could be due to the pressing situation (then),” he said while explaining the audit findings on the Covid-19 management by the Health Ministry and the Science and Technology Ministry.
As of April 2022, a total of 71.26 million out of 82.85 million vaccine doses received have been utilised.
Of the 11.59 million remaining doses, 1.1 million comprising CanSino (368,630 doses), Pfizer’s Comirnaty (603,954 doses) and AstraZeneca (130,200 doses) vaccines have expiry dates of between one to 212 days.
The CanSino vaccine has a life span of 19 days, Comirnaty (212 days) and AstraZeneca (206 days).
“Losses were incurred as the expired vaccines had to be disposed of,” the report read.
The report found that Selangor and Sabah have yet to repay RM145.37mil to the National Trust Fund for Covid-19.
This was the outstanding amount from the RM393.42mil allocation from Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry to carry out the National Covid-19 Immunisation drive.
States were required to return any utilised funds after vaccination centre operations ended on Oct 15, 2021.
The report also found that the number of nurses hired during Covid-19 was lower than the actual requirement as per the recommended level of care ratio for hospital emergency departments.
“The number of nurses placed at intensive care unit (ICU) wards during the pandemic was insufficient and created difficulties, especially when there were nurses on quarantine leave,” said the A-G report.
It also found that a number of personal protective equipment (PPE) had not been utilised. They comprised 3.08 million pairs of boot covers and 840,000 pieces of coveralls.
The ceiling allocation for the Health Ministry for Covid-19 management was RM10.691bil while the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry’s was RM910mil.
