PARLIAMENT | The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is expected to table its report on the government’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic on Oct 30.
PAC chairperson Mas Ermieyati said that the report will cover expired vaccines, unusable ventilator equipment and excess personal protective equipment (PPE) under the Health Ministry.
"These issues were reported in the 2021 Auditor General's Report. PAC held five proceedings on June 15, August 22, Sept 14 and Sept 21 and called witnesses (including) former transport minister Wee Ka Siong, Auditor-General Wan Suraya Wan Mohd Radzi, (and) former health director-general Noor Hisham Abdullah,” she told a press conference today.
Other witnesses include Health Ministry’s deputy secretary-general (Finance) Norazman Ayob, former secretary-general Chen Chaw Min, former secretary-general Mohd Shafiq Abdullah, and former Medical Services Development division head Dr Asmah Samat, among others.
The 2021 Auditor-General’s report which was made public February this year, revealed that that there had been a waste of RM825.98 million involving the management of the Covid-19 outbreak.
It is estimated that about 1.1 million doses of 82.85 million total Covid-19 vaccines expired in April 2021, thus wasted.
The report stated that the government sustained over RM13 million in losses after 108 out of 136 new ventilator machines it ordered in 2020 could not be used by the Health Ministry.
After ordering the 136 ventilators for a price tag of RM20.1 million under emergency allocation, the ministry later found out that some of them were incompatible, according to the report prepared by the National Audit Department (NAD).
Following this, the government had to fork out another RM3.97 million for upgrading works by the same company, making the total costs for its ventilator procurement rise to RM24.07 million.
The audit report also detected a significant surplus of PPE equipment with a balance of 3.08 million pairs of shoe covers and 840,000 PPE suits as of July 2022.
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