Financial irregularities in Polio drive reported

ACTION AGAINST a lady medical officer (MO) posted at Daraganj D Type Health Post has unmasked the mass level financial irregularities during the much-hyped Pulse Polio drive in the district. On Monday an order was issued by the chief medical officer, reportedly, directing the MO to join back at her original place of posting at Women's Hospital in Dahiyawan.

ACTION AGAINST a lady medical officer (MO) posted at Daraganj D Type Health Post has unmasked the mass level financial irregularities during the much-hyped Pulse Polio drive in the district.

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On Monday an order was issued by the chief medical officer, reportedly, directing the MO to join back at her original place of posting at Women's Hospital in Dahiyawan. She was attached to the Daraganj D Type Health Post for conducting the pulse polio drive.

The health department sources informed that following the complaints that lesser number of polio booths were set up than mentioned in the workplan in Daraganj area during the December polio drive, ex-CMO Dr Harishankar Gupta instituted an inquiry against the lady medical officer posted at Daraganj D Type Health Post. Dy CMO and district immunisation officer (IO) Dr Swatantra Singh was made an inquiry officer.

During the inquiry, which continued for a month, it was found that she had allegedly ordered to set up lesser number of polio booths than mentioned in the workplan and had withdrawn payment for the polio booths which were only on papers.

The IO also found that payment was withdrawn for the supervisors who were not even appointed during the drive. At some places only two members were found in the house-to-house team whereas payment was withdrawn for three members, said Dr Swatantra Singh.

"Although the lady medical officer claimed that the supervisors misled her on all these issues and there was also some computer error, due to which all these problems occurred but one thing was clear that all the irregularities started getting reported after she joined the post," he added.

Dr Singh said the medical officer has been asked to join back at her original place of posting.

However if the highly placed sources are to believed this was just a tip of an ice-berg and often lesser number of booths are created than mentioned in the workplan. Another source said that despite being a clear case of fund embezzlement the department instead of taking a strict action, asked her to join back at her original place of posting, which is strange and need to be further probed.

Despite repeated attempts the MO could not be contacted for comments.