ED chargesheet on covid centres’ scam: ‘Staff worked over 12 hrs due to under-deployment’

The chargesheet includes statements from six medical staff, who either never worked at the centres or worked for a short time but their names were included in the attendance sheets forged by the accused for a long period. One of the doctors had received an appointment letter from Lifeline for the position of resident medical officer in Dahisar on March 4, 2021. He worked there for two months but the attendance register showed his name for eight months. In his statement to the ED, the doctor said that ‘he used to put extra efforts in order to save patients due to under deployment of staff’. He also said there was no proper system of attendance at the centre.

An X-ray technician, who worked at the Dahisar Covid-19 centre for eight months, also had a similar experience. “…he was forced to work for more than 12 hours as there were only two technicians at that time and they had to handle the work for all the patients in all three shifts,” said the ED.

Another doctor, who worked at the centre, said the medical staff complained to the management and asked the firm to increase the strengh of staff for better care to patients. The ED had claimed that after being given the contract to provide staff, including doctors, nurses, multipurpose staff and technicians, the firm conducted interviews. Some of the data given by the aspirants at the time of the interviews were used by the accused to forge the attendance sheets to cover under deployment.

An employee of Lifeline explained how this was done. He said in his statement that the staff was expected to make entries in a register while entering the centre, based on which they were given PPE kits. “After that, the BMC medical officer used to come to verify the staff attendance daily but they were not checking the attendance sheets properly. They used to sign the register as verified without actually counting the number of manpower present,” the statement of the employee said.

The ED claims the dean of the centre, Dr Kishore Bisure who was arrested in the case in July, ignored these irregularities as he was given kickbacks. It is alleged that medical officers had raised issues at the centre but he told them to ignore them. The ED has named Lifeline, Bisure, one of the employees Dr Arvind Singh and four of the firm’s partners as accused- Sujit Patkar, Hemant Gupta, Sanjay Shah and Rajeev Salunkhe.

According to the Expression of Interest, the manpower required at the centre was as per 50 oxygenated and 50 non-oxygenated and ten ICU beds per day. “It seems that at no point of time desired number of medical staff as per EOI were present in the Covid centres handled by the partners of the Life Line Services,” said the ED.
Based on the difference in the actual deployment, the accused made gains of 47.25 per cent on oxygenated beds, 73.5 per cent on ICU beds and with no staff employed on beds without oxygen, a 100 per cent unlawful gain was made, the ED has claimed.