HERAT CITY (Pajhwok): Pajhwok Afghan News findings show that in the first wave of Coronavirus, a CT scan device was purchased at 30.8 million afghanis— about 19.3 million higher price than the market rate.
After the outbreak of the virus in Herat, the previous government had allocated 400 million afghanis to fight the virus in the province, of which more than 236 million was utilized and about 164 million returned to the Ministry of Finance.
A document obtained by Pajhwok Afghan News shows that most of the Covid budget was spent by the Herat governor house, the public health department and provincial information and culture department.
The office of ombudsperson in the previous government said that about 20 million afghanis had been embezzled from the budget allocated to fight the virus in Herat, and 21 people had been charged in this regard.
The ombudsperson office said the men were accused of buying goods at a higher price than the market, unrelated purchases and price difference in purchasing the same items in other provinces.
According to the document received by Pajhwok, a German CT Scan machine was purchased on April 22, 2020 at a cost of 30,800,000 afghanis for Herat Covid hospital.
But documents obtained by Pajhwok from the previous government ombudsperson office show that the device rate was 11.5 million afghanis in the market.
Jamshid Rasouli, a former spokesman for the Attorney General Office, last year in a press conference in Kabul had said that the department had completed a case of suspected corruption in the spending of the Covid budget in Herat province and charged 21 people in connection with it.
The CT scan machine purchase had been signed by Abdul Hakim Tamana, the former head of the Herat public health department.
Tamana said: “Because the inspector office did not know about specialized medical equipment and examined the machine by non-technical persons, we did not want to the working team to get insulted during the covid crisis and their right to be violated; our demand at the time was for a fact-finding team and those who know about the medical equipment.”
Meanwhile, Ghulam Habiba Hashemi, a member of the Herat Provincial Council and a member of the Corona Budget Monitoring Committee and one of the accused in embezzling Corona budget, criticized the way the ombudsperson investigation was conducted.
He told Pajhwok: “We assured the people of Herat that everything that was bought to fight the Covid virus would be in a transparent manner.”
Documents obtained by Pajhwok show that the Herat public health department spent 156,395,025 afghanis from May 15, 2020 to December 10, 2020, the local administration spent 33,594,899 afghanis from May 25 to December 9, 2020 and information and culture department spent 20,205,727 afghanis for controlling coronavirus in the province.
However, a number of Herat residents and civil society activists say the budget for the coronavirus has not been used properly.
Amina Kakar, a civil society activist in Herat, accused former local government of failing to monitor Covid-19 budget spending.
“A lot of money was spent on awareness broachers, the broachers did not help spread public awareness. Most people in Herat were unaware about the pandemic and got infected,” she said.
The first case of coronavirus in Afghanistan was recorded in Heart and that was why the government paid special attention for controlling the pandemic in the province.
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