Large-scale irregularities took place in building the Kushtia Medical College, a government report has found.
Flouting the public procurement rules, the authorities had purchased goods and services from the suppliers and contractors directly or through limited tendering method without open bidding, it said.
The Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) has recently conducted an in-depth evaluation of the project, where it has detected such anomalies and corruption by the agencies responsible for project execution.
People involved with the project alleged the graft-ridden Health Directorate has not only failed to build the medical college in eight years, but violated the government planning process and resorted to several irregularities.
Yet, the Health Directorate, the implementing agency, and the Public Works Department (PWD) had completed only 34 per cent of the Tk 6.11 billion "Kushtia Medical College establishment project" in eight years ending in December 2019.
The report said the implementing agencies had split the procurements into 84 packages, and awarded contracts to small, non-qualified and less-qualified contractors for a sensitive work like setting up of the medical college.
Although, the Health Directorate prepared the original development project proposal (DPP) with the provision of 14 packages for all the procurements, it later split those into 84 packages in the revised DPP.
Splitting the packages into small ones, the authority used Limited Tendering Method (LTM) or Direct Procurement Method (DPM) in many cases.
The alleged manipulation had not only wasted time, but made the project work far from optimum level.
For example, the PWD divided the 10-storey hospital building construction into four packages. It has appointed one contractor for constructing the ground floor to the 2nd floor, another for the 3rd floor to the 6th floor, another for piling work and another contractor for sand filling work of the building.
The PWD has appointed five contractors for 16 construction packages of the project.
Among the contractors, the project implementing agency awarded Ataur Rahman Ata for four construction work, Shamim Enterprise for five work, Galaxy Associate for three, MEC Engineering & Construction Limited for two and N Hossain for two physical infrastructure work.
The IMED report has recommended merger of several packages with a single one for constructing one building in the medical college project.
It also found the contractor completed finishing work of some floors in a building before completing its vertical structures of the buildings.
This sloppy work resulted in the damage to the plaster, doors, window grill, window sheds, and tiles on the finished floors of the building.
Meanwhile, the PWD invited tenders changing the rate schedule without obtaining permission from the relevant authority of the government.
Besides, it has revised the project proposal with the previous rate schedule instead of the latest one, which pushed up the cost and time for project execution.
Following the massive irregularities, the ECNEC on June 21, 2018 asked the authority to take action for the violation of the financial and planning discipline, change of the "scope of work" and other irregularities.
The IMED also recommended punishment of the responsible persons who split the certain work into many packages without the permission from the proper authority.
But no action is yet to be taken by the Health Ministry and the authorities concerned, project officials said.
After repeated attempts, the last project director and recently removed director (hospital and clinic) of Directorate of Health Dr Mohammad Aminul Islam could not be reached for comments.
The list of anomalies is pretty longer. The Health Directorate had not conducted any feasibility study before taking up the project resulting in massive changes in the scope of work and design of the DPP.
The IMED said there were coordination problem between the PWD and the architectural department, which also delayed project work.
Before completing the project work, the authority admitted 50 medical students for studying, which interrupted their learning due to the lack of facilities.
The Heath Directorate had originally taken up the medical college project at Tk2.75 billion for implementing between January 2012 and December 2014.
It appointed the PWD as its associate for the construction work.
When the Health Directorate failed to complete the work within the December 2014 deadline, the government extended the time for one more year up to December 2015.
For the second time the government again extended the deadline for another one year upto December 2016.
But it failed to complete the project. Then the Health Directorate again sought revision and the ECNEC revised the project accordingly allowing it to complete the work by December 2019. This time the cost swelled by 122 per cent to Tk 6.11 billion.
According to the IMED report, the project implementing agency had invited 58 per cent of tenders for the procurement packages and failed to invite for remaining 42 per cent bidding until Dec 2019.
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