PUTRAJAYA: As of April 2022, two states – Sabah and Selangor – still owed the National Trust Fund (KWAN) a total of RM145.3mil of Covid-19 funds, Series 2 of the Auditor-General Report has revealed.
This was the outstanding amount from the RM393.42mil allocation from the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry (Mosti) to the states to carry out the Covid-19 immunisation drive (PICK).
However, the states were required to return unutilised funds.
“As a result of delays in the states finalising its expenditure of KWAN funds, the RM145.3mil could not be used for PICK,” the findings of the audit on the Health Ministry and Mosti’s Covid-19 management showed.
In response to the audit findings, Mosti said on Dec 29, 2022 that it had meetings with the secretaries of both states on Oct 20, 2022.
“The Sabah state secretary has confirmed that the final balance that will be returned by Sabah to KWAN amounted to RM17.40mil while Selangor will return RM47.38mil,” said the ministry.
For 2020 until April 2021, the Health Ministry received an allocation of RM5.742bil for PICK, of which it had used up RM4.502bil. Mosti, on the other hand, had used up RM581.95mil from the RM910mil allocated for it between 2020 and October 2021.
In 2021, the government announced that it would dip into KWAN to fund the purchase of vaccines and the vaccination drive. Putrajaya announced that some RM6bil would be used for the purpose.
As of Dec 31, 2020, the fund had an asset value amounting to RM19.5bil.
In a related note, it also found that the government incurred RM13.07mil in losses over the procurement of 93 defective ventilators for Health Ministry facilities in 2021.
Speaking to the media after the release of the report, Auditor-General Datuk Seri Nik Azman Nik Abdul Majid said no warranty was 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 yesterday.
“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 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 had 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 and 212 days.
The audit’s overall conclusion is that the Covid-19 management had achieved the objectives of the Disaster Management Plan and PICK.
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 also found that the number of nurses hired during Covid-19 pandemic was lower than the actual requirement as per the recommended level of care ratio for hospital emergency departments.
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.
The audit’s overall conclusion is that the Covid-19 management had achieved the objectives of the Disaster Management Plan and PICK.
It said the successful implementation of Covid-19 activities and the actions taken had successfully helped the public health system make the transition from the pandemic to the endemic phase.
