Yogesh Mishra
Raipur, March 22, 2010
Scams and irregularities continue to haunt Directorate Health Services (DHS) as bidders refrained from taking part in tendering process, sniffing corruption in the entire procedures.
With the boycott of the regular bidders, the DHS has been left with only one application that it received in the past 30 days and now it looks for no other option but to invite fresh tenders.
The tender forms were scheduled to be opened on Tuesday from 2-4 pm. Since only one bidder had shown interest, the DHS decided to revoke the tendering process, confirmed Nikhil Deshpande, Directorate’s Assistant Grade-II from store section.
The transporting agencies alleged that the tender, which was issued on February 23, 2011 for transportation of medicines and medical equipments to different parts of the state, contained loads of vague clauses and some were generalised to such an extent that created suspicion over the intentions of the officials who determined terms and conditions.
Central Chronicle has obtained a copy of tender form issued in February 2011 and another tender form that was issued in 2009-10. On comparison, some of the significant clauses in the two forms did not match.
Where the clause 9 of the tender issued in 2009-10 explicitly stipulates three years of minimum experience in medicine and medical equipments transportation, the same clause in February 2011 tender has been generalised for all types of transporters with no emphasis on mandatory experience for medicine supply.
Doubting over the motives of the DHS officials, the transporting agencies asked whether it was appropriate to gauge all types of transporters on same scale when one needed to have thorough experience in handing the delicate and expensive medicines. They alleged the officials wanted to benefit their closer ones by putting such clause.
Similarly, the dates of issuance of tenders forms and opening of tenders have been omitted in clause 2 in this financial year’s tendering process. The clause simply says that the tenders would be opened after 30 days of its issuance date. The medicine transporters had already apprehended that if they would participate in the bidding process, their applications would deliberately be ignored.
They further charged that tender forms were sold at higher rates than the actual one. They pointed Deshpande for charging Rs 5000 instead of Rs 1000 for the form. “We did no even get official receipt against Rs 5000. Deshpande rather gave us receipt in the plain paper against Rs 1000 payment,” they alleged. Central Chronicle has obtained the both the copies of formal receipt that was given earlier against tender form purchase and the latest one given in plain paper.
When Central Chronicle contacted Director Dr Kamalpreet Singh, he denied all the corruption charges leveled by the transporting agencies and claimed that the bidding process was done transparently and impartially. However, later on Tuesday noon, the DHS officials suddenly announced revocation of the tendering process saying that only one application form was submitted. When pointed out that there was no mention of dates in the tender form, Singh said, “This is not a big issue. If any tender is being invited in any particular fiscal then how can it be interpreted as meant for any other financial year?”
When asked that some of the transporting agencies sniffed irregularities in the tendering process as many of the clauses were deliberately framed to benefit the specific transporters, he said all the apprehensions were baseless.
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