Govt must make public details of all purchases made to fight COVID-19: Congress

New Delhi, Apr 27: The Congress on Monday demanded that the government should make public details of all purchases made in the last one month to fight COVID-19, alleging that huge profiteering was being made at this time of crisis.

Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said the government should ensure that huge profiteering in procurement of equipment for fighting COVID-19 be stopped immediately.

"There seems to be absolute anarchy in procurement of equipment for fighting COVID-19," he said at a press conference via video conferencing. "We would like to demand from the Health Ministry and the government to make public all procurements made with regard to equipment to fight COVID-19 for testing, PPEs and ventilators. All those transactions must be transparently placed in public domain," he said.

Referring to a company engaged in supply of testing kits, he alleged that kits purchased at Rs 245 were being sold by the same company to ICMR at Rs 600 each while the same to Tamil Nadu government were sold at Rs 400 each. He said the matter came to light in a petition before the Delhi High Court by a company supplying such equipment.

"This is an extremely serious matter which hurts the fight of India against COVID-19," he said, adding, that "our country's resources are scarce and we have to optimise the resources and not allow companies to make arbitrage of over 60 per cent in these transactions."