UP minister double role: One arm gave contracts to another

It is a cooperative body. Technically,it is autonomous. Actually,it is controlled by the Cooperative Department of the government. And when it got these windfall orders in 2009-10 and 2010-11,Family Welfare Minister Babu Singh Kushwaha was also the Cooperative Minister. Kushwaha later resigned owning moral responsibility for the scam involving NRHM funds in the office of Lucknow’s CMO. Despite several attempts,Kushwaha was unavailable for comment.

The NRHM review has found that the Family Welfare Department allotted work to various agencies without tenders,paid them huge advances,did little physical or financial monitoring,and did not penalise them for delays.

PACCFED seems to have been a particular favourite.

Usually,an agreement is signed before awarding of work to a company,which lays down milestones,a payment schedule,penalties for delay and other terms and conditions.

To PACCFED,the department gave works worth Rs 200 crore without signing agreements. In the absence of agreements,it wasn’t possible to fix delays,says the review report. In fact,it was impossible to nail PACCFED for anything. Even after there was an agreement,the department ignored PACCFED’s transgressions and kept giving it work.

Interestingly,while the figures given in the review add up to Rs 563.48 crore,PACCFED Managing Director V K Chowdhary said they got contracts Rs 830 crore.

The findings of the review:

2009-10: The department gave PACCFED works worth Rs 364.59 crore. In one lot on July 16,2009,it got contracts for setting up 2,372 sub-centres,30 district drug warehouses and 21 community health centres across the state.

PACCFED was supposed to complete the sub-centres by December 2009,but it had not handed over 70 sub-centres until April 2011. The district warehouses were completed by April 30,2010,but 20 of the 21 community health centres were still to be completed when the review report was finalised in May 2011.

The same year,PACCFED got another lot of contracts for constructing 11 training centres,four ANM training centres and 942 Janani Suraksha Yojna wards. For this,no agreement was signed. Of these,all 11 training centres,four ANM training centres and 74 JSY wards were still to be completed in May 2011,said the review report.

At the end of the year,PACCFED had not spent Rs 54.22 crore.

2010-11: The department gave PACCFED works worth Rs 198.89 crore for construction of 1,202 sub-centres and seven regional drug warehouses,besides upgradation of 89 district hospitals as per the Indian Public Health Standards. This too without an agreement.

Work on 1,014 of the sub-centres,four warehouses and 18 district hospitals was yet to begin at the time of the review in May 2011 — one month after the end of the financial year.

PACCFED retained Rs 160.2 crore unspent funds.

The review found huge discrepancies in the rates given by the agency. For example,in 2009-10,PACCFED estimated the cost of construction of a district and regional warehouse at Rs 46.7 lakh. In 2010-11,this was more than double at Rs 1.62 crore.

Says PACCFED MD Chowdhary: “Since 2009-10,we have got civil construction works worth Rs 830 crore under the NRHM,most of the works have been completed and remaining will be completed within the current fiscal 2011-12.”

Kushwaha was not available for comment despite repeated attempts.

Incidentally,PACCFED was set up in 1979 with the objective of promoting the construction of cold storage in the cooperative sector through technical guidance and arrangement of finance from cooperative financial institutions and NABARD. Its name then was UP Cold Storage Cooperative Federation.

Out of 74 cold stores set up under its stewardship,all except six are defunct. It stopped doing this work long ago and was reborn in its present avatar in 2009.