Fresh documents submitted to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) suggest that the Karnataka State Drugs Logistics & Warehousing Society (KSDLWS) procured sanitisers during the Covid-19 pandemic from a company which had violated tender terms by supplying poor quality sanitisers in the past.
The Karnataka Rashtra Samithi has filed a complaint pertaining to this with the PAC, which is already looking into alleged irregularities in the procurement of Covid-19 equipment.
According to the complaint, chemical analysts from government labs in Kalaburagi and Ramanagar districts had declared that the hand sanitisers procured from a Bengaluru-based company by KSDLWS via a tender in October 2019 were “not of standard quality”.
Moreover, the company allegedly supplied only half the 47,000 units of 500-ml sanitisers procured at Rs 97.44 per unit and submitted that it couldn’t supply the other half.
Despite such violations of tender regulations, KSDLWS allegedly procured sanitisers at Rs 250 per unit from the same company during the Covid-19 pandemic, when tender regulations were relaxed by the government.
“The company should have been blacklisted since it violated tender terms. However, the blind eye turned by KSDLWS authorities regarding the issue has raised several suspicions,” Deepak C N, general secretary of the Samithi, said in a complaint.
The complaint is among the several filed by the organisation regarding irregularities in procurement of Covid-19 equipment.