SHILLONG [Nov 10]: The Opposition Congress has demanded a special audit on the unwanted and wasteful expenditures incurred by the Government in its fight against COVID-19 as the Government earlier had claimed of spending Rs 399 crore in the fight against the pandemic.
Participating in the short duration discussion tabled by Mawlai MLA Process T. Sawkmie, Congress MLA, Himalaya Shangpliang demanded that there should be a special audit on the “unwanted and wasteful” expenditures incurred by the Government.
Congress MLA from Mawsynram, Shangpliang questioned as to why Rs 8.3 crore was spent on the procurement of Sodium Hypochlorite alone within a span of two months (April-May) while alleging that the health department had even bought expensive furniture and televisions from the National Health Mission.
Replying to the discussion Chief Minister, Conrad Sangma disclosed that out of the Rs 399 crore expended, bills have been paid for Rs 251 crore and the pending liabilities are Rs 148 crore. The Government had tapped into various sources to make the COVID expenditure in addition to the State Governments own sources which comes to Rs 103.8 crore.
Answering queries from Shangpliang, Sangma responded by stating that only Rs one crore was spent on Sodium Hypochlorite and that the amount of Rs 8.3 crore also included cost of sanitising roads, hospitals, residences etc and transportation charges.
“Large number of additional manpower was also recruited for managing the testing, and various other support activities at hospitals and other health facilities. The total expenditure on contractual staff and human resources is about Rs 15 crore and on testing including lab & surveillance is Rs 38.9 crore,” the Chief Minister said.
Informing that an amount of Rs 30.8 crore was spent on setting up and management of the Corona Care Centres, Chief Minister further added an amount of Rs 2.67 crore has been paid to various hotels and guest houses as these hotels were requisitioned for proper quarantine for health workers.
Government also claimed of spending Rs 6.11 crore on provision kits for those undergoing home quarantine even as an amount of about Rs 1.5 crore was paid at the rate of Rs 10,000 per community quarantine centre.
In response to a question by Congress legislator George Lyngdoh on why Industries Department had to spend Rs 3.3 crore for the supply of masks, the Chief Minister stated that the amount was spent to help self-help groups (SHGs) produce masks.
Sangma said that despite the falling tax collections and the shortage of resources, the Government since March, had ramped up RTPCR/TruNAT/CBNAAT testing capacity per day from 30 to over 2,000. “As of date, we have conducted over 2.14 lakh tests and are among the top states when it comes to the number of tests conducted per million of population.”