Air purifiers for hospitals: All's not clean
Passing the buck and cutting phone calls were the response of many high- level Health Ministry officials to the Sunday Times as soon as “air-purifiers” were mentioned yesterday, while the Project Director was insistent that nothing has been finalised yet.
A list of questions emailed to Health Secretary Bhadrani Jayawardena, on her request on Tuesday – both about the COVID19 outbreak in the country and the alleged deal to purchase 300 air-purification systems for state hospitals – elicited no response up to the time of going to print last night.
The Sunday Times in a news story headlined ‘Queries over Health Ministry purchase of 300 air-purification systems’ published on May 3, disclosed that sources were alleging that due processes including seeking of specs and technical expertise were not followed before bids were invited.
Yesterday, the Sunday Times phoned numerous officials including those in the Medical Services Division, Medical Services and Planning. All of them said they were not handling the matter and kept giving the names of other officials.
Attempts to contact the Biomedical Engineering Services drew a blank as one official is said to have left the position and a landline number given for his successor was cut off on the grounds that there was no such person there.
These 300 air- purification systems/ air sterilizers said to cost in total more than Rs. 300 million are part of a list of items due to be bought through World Bank funding of US$ 128 million. They are to be procured by UNICEF for the Health Ministry under ‘Sri Lanka’s COVID-19 Emergency Response and Health Systems Preparedness’ Project.
There are allegations by many sources that the tender for these air-purification systems has already been floated and it was only after that, that the ministry was trying to drum up requests from state hospitals to gather the numbers.
A response from the procurement agency, UNICEF, states that the Project Director on April 3, made a formal request for this procurement, followed by UNICEF inviting bids on April 14. UNCEF has shared the submitted technical responses with the ministry on April 24.
However, the Sunday Times understands that some of the hospitals requested the air- purification systems only in the last week of April.
On May 4, after the Sunday Times published the news item, UNICEF sent to us the following statement titled ‘Statement from UNICEF regarding procurement of COVID19 medical equipment for the Ministry of Health funded by the World Bank’.
It stated that on April 3, UNICEF received a formal request from the ministry seeking support to procure a list of surgical consumables, medical consumables and medical equipment including 300 air-purifiers/ sterilizers.
“In response and following UNICEF global procurement guidelines, UNICEF undertook a competitive bidding process. In this respect, on the 14th of April 2020, UNICEF invited bids from local suppliers, while also checking the availability and pricing of these items with UNICEF’s Global Supply Division based in Copenhagen, Denmark,” stated UNICEF.
UNICEF added that all suppliers were requested to submit technical and financial bids by April 17 and on April 24, UNICEF shared the submitted technical responses
with the ministry for it formal technical evaluation, enabling it to check that all items complied to ministry specifications as identified by its in- house technical experts.
“Only after the technical evaluation is completed by the Ministry of Health will the financial costs be determined ,” states UNICEF, adding: “In all its procurements UNICEF follows global procurement guidelines and best practice to ensure effectiveness, fairness, transparency and integrity.”
The Sunday Times then followed up, seeking certain clarifications from UNICEF, emailing the agency’s Communication Specialist Jeremy Sprigge, to which he responded that this procurement is currently still in process and no contract has been awarded yet.