Male’, Maldives — The Health Ministry of Maldives requests the Attorney General, Ibrahim Riffath for advice on the ventilator corruption case as there is no hope that the contract with a Dubai based company to bring 75 ventilators to Maldives will be completed.
While it has been almost a year since the Health Ministry had ordered a Dubai based company to bring 75 ventilators to Maldives, so far, the company has only sent 15 ventilators, of which, important parts were missing from 05 ventilators that were brought. According to the agreement signed by the Ministry, the company is yet to bring 60 more ventilators to Maldives.
The Health Minister of Maldives, Ahmed Naseem spoke last night regarding the arrival date of these ventilators and informed that they are still not sure of an exact date for when the ventilators will arrive. He also anticipated that from the actions of the Dubai company, it does not seem like they would be sending the remaining 60 ventilators to Maldives.
Minister Naseem informed that the ministry has requested the Attorney General’s Office for advice on how to further carry out the ventilator issue.
We have to stick to one thing on this ventilator issue, either to accept those ventilators or to patiently wait till they send the remaining ventilators.
Health Minister Naseem
However, Minister Naseem noted that if there is an issue that needs to be investigated, then they will do so and if there is an issue that must be sent for appealing, then it will be sent as well. He then stated that the ventilator issue is something that happened long before he became the Minister of Health so he is not sure of how things will work out.
The previous Health Minister, Abdullah Ameen resigned from office was lead to by a series of events, stating from an audit conducted by the Auditor General’s Office, which suggested foul play in all three contracts awarded by the Minister of Health, to procure 142 ventilators for the state.
This included of the agreement made between Executors General Trading LLC for 75 ventilators, MedTech Maldives Pvt Ltd for 50 ventilators and with Naadu Pvt Ltd to acquire 24 ventilators, out of which the agreement with Executors General which became the most controversial of all.
While Minister Ameen later resigned due to the scandal, Deputy Minister Nishaama Mohamed, and senior officials of the Ministry were implicated in the scandal. After the audit report, the ACC conducted an investigation into the scandal and requested charges against the 11 implicated. However, the PG stated that charges could not be brought forward in the case due to insufficient evidence.
