Propaganda against TB control plan rejected

LAHORE: Health Services Director General Dr Munir Ahmed Monday said Provincial TB Control Programme did not directly spent 90 per cent of funds provided by the global fund and National TB Control Programme (NTP).

According to a handout, Dr Munir said global funds and NTP directly provided medicines, gene-export machines, laboratory equipment and vehicles every year to all provincial TB control programmes.

Similarly, provincial governments are only authorise to utilise salary of project employees and training expenditures and these staff are directly recruited by the representative of global funds and National TB programme. He said every year global fund and NTP conduct audit of these funds and audit paragraph in government department was a routine matter.

Dr Munir further said National TB Control Programme audit team had cleared audit paragraphs after the complete examination. In this regard, the federal government issued a letter in which they have mentioned that any financial embezzlement and corruption was not proven.

He said all the vehicles of the TB control programme were either under the use of the head office or in field assignments. Similarly, all the procurements and contracts of the TB control programme have been done in compliance of the PEPRA Rules.

Dr Munir clarified a news item published in some newspapers regarding financial embezzlement and corruption in TB control programme. He said the news was misleading and contradicting to the facts. He explained that TB control programme had neither made any kind of corruption and nor financial discrepancies.

He said a few months ago some employees of the project had been dismissed on account of black mailing, misconduct and harassment of women and now these employees were involved in propaganda against the department.