Akash Sama­roo

The Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC) has raised se­ri­ous con­cerns over the Min­istry of Health’s in­volve­ment in de­ter­min­ing which phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sup­pli­ers were paid by NIPDEC, ques­tion­ing why for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh was in­volved in a process that was sup­posed to be in­de­pen­dent­ly man­aged by the State pro­cure­ment agency.

The is­sue arose as the com­mit­tee ex­am­ined how hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars owed to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sup­pli­ers were pri­ori­tised at a time when avail­able fund­ing was in­suf­fi­cient to set­tle all out­stand­ing bills.