UK’S DEAL WITH ‘DUBIOUS’ AMTZ RAISES EYEBROWS

The United Kingdom government entering into a memorandum of understanding with the “dubious” Andhra Pradesh Medtech Zone for a manufacturing support programme to fight the Covid-19 pandemic raised many an eyebrow. A recent British Deputy High Commission press release said the UK government had joined forces with AMTZ to plug the gap between demand and supply of ventilators and other medical equipment. But, it failed to answer queries on why the UK government had picked AMTZ as partner when the latter’s ventilators had failed clinical trials.

The United Kingdom government entering into a memorandum of understanding with the “dubious” Andhra Pradesh Medtech Zone for a manufacturing support programme to fight the Covid-19 pandemic raised many an eyebrow.

A recent British Deputy High Commission press release said the UK government had joined forces with AMTZ to plug the gap between demand and supply of ventilators and other medical equipment. But, it failed to answer queries raised by Deccan Chronicle on why the UK government had picked AMTZ as partner when the latter’s ventilators had failed clinical trials due to sub-standard quality.

The Centre, after giving an advance of `14.5 crore, did not include AMTZ in the list of recommended suppliers post clinical evaluation. The AMTZ also failed to fulfil its commitment to supply 30,000 ventilators to Andhra Pradesh.

What is more intriguing is that the manufacturing support programme, which British Deputy High Commissioner Andrew Fleming described as “exciting”, is worth just `56 lakh. “More than the money, the tag of the UK government is what AMTZ managing director Dr Jitendar Sharma desires to have,” sources pointed out.

Earlier, Dr Sharma sought to involve Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant and K. Vijay Raghavan, principal scientific adviser to the PM, to project his clout whenever financial frauds or failures were exposed; the latest addition to the list is the British Deputy High Commission.

The High Commission also evaded questions on how the MoU was entered into with Dr Sharma, who has been facing serious allegations of misappropriation of funds allotted to AMTZ and was stripped off the powers to deal with financial matters by the AP government.

The AP government’s investigating agencies prima facie established financial irregularities running into several crores of rupees against Dr Sharma following which the government removed him as MD. Buckling under pressure from a lobby at the Centre, Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy reinstated Dr Sharma.

All that a High Commission spokesperson said was “all projects supported by the UK government require the completion of prior due diligence checks and implementation of strict measures to prevent against any misuse of funds, including no advance payments and accurate records of expenditure.”

The spokesperson, however, chose to remain silent on how the prior due diligence missed out core factors like lack of expertise of AMTZ to make ventilators, its ventilators failing clinical trials and its head Dr Sharma indulging in financial frauds.