COMMENT | Ventilator purchase exposes many lapses

COMMENT | News reports on the Health Ministry’s purchase of China-made ventilators during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 made the headlines for all the wrong reasons over the past three days.

It also exposed the shortcuts, the weaknesses and the shortcomings in government procurement and in the process, the malaise in the system.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in its report released two days ago said the Health Ministry and Pharmaniaga had been blaming each other for 104 faulty ventilators they received from China.

There was no contractual agreement signed, it said, between the two in regard to the ventilators procurement, where Pharmaniaga's subsidiary Pharmaniaga Logistics Sdn Bhd (PLSB) had acted as an intermediary between the Health Ministry and suppliers in China.

Why?...