Max city, expenses: Mumbai civic body has spent over ₹2K-crore on Covid

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), India’s richest civic body, spent around ₹2,000 crore in 2020-2021 on tackling Covid-19

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), India’s richest civic body, spent around ₹2,000 crore in 2020-2021 on tackling Covid-19. While the third wave is anticipated later this year, the BMC projects that the expenditure in the ongoing fiscal will fall to half of 2020-2021.

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BMC officials said the expenditure may dip as there were only recurring expenses on maintaining and upgrading the health infrastructure and not much had to be spent on building new makeshift hospitals. This expenditure, however, will not include the administrative cost the BMC will bear to vaccinate citizens.

P Velrasu, additional municipal commissioner of the BMC, said, “The expenditure of the ongoing fiscal might not be much when we compare to that of the 2020-2021 fiscal. There is no concrete estimation, but it may be half, but again it depends [on the situation]. There are several factors behind the fall in the expenses and one of them is the ability to use the infrastructure already set up to handle the first and second wave.”

However, according to BMC officials, these are just estimations, considering the third wave is expected to hit the city by September and the expenditure will depend on its intensity.

Last year, the BMC’s expenditure of around ₹2,000 crore was towards enhancing health care in the form of jumbo bed facilities, setting up new Covid-19 care centres, followed by expenditure towards hotel bills for accommodation of frontline staff, along with recruiting new staff on contract basis.

Money had to be spent on medical equipment such as personal protective equipment (PPE) kits, N 95 masks, 3 ply masks, gloves, face shields, hydroxychloroquine, thermometers, body-bags, protective eye-wear, sanitisers etc. Further, purchasing life-saving injections, including Remdesivir and Tocilizumab, was a substantial expenditure.

In the ongoing fiscal, the BMC has spent over ₹400 crore on Covid-19, which include cost towards regular purchase of drugs and maintenance of Covid facilities. However, according to civic officials, in the coming days, an additional expenditure of ₹400 crore is expected for setting up oxygen plants in the city along with oxygen refilling plants. The BMC has plans to set up 16 oxygen plants at 12 civic hospitals in the city along with setting up an oxygen refilling plant in Mahul.

In the 2020-2021 budget, the BMC had last year reserved ₹2 crore for fighting Covid-19 and later had spent money from the contingency funds. However, in the ongoing fiscal, the amount is being spent from the health budget. The BMC had allocated ₹4,728.53 crore, 12% of budget, to the health sector in the ongoing fiscal.

However, corporators have questioned the BMC’s estimations. Vinod Mishra, BJP corporator and standing committee member, said, “The BMC has spent over ₹400 crore and another ₹400 crore will be spent in the coming days. This takes the figure to ₹800 crore which is around 40% of the expenditure last year. I feel the expenditure might be anywhere around ₹1,500 crore in the ongoing fiscal.”

Mishra added, “Also, there needs to be more transparency in the expenditure on Covid-19. In the standing committee, we are getting proposals for post-facto approval under which expenditure is done due to emergency and later administrative approval is taken.”