PGI gets rap for haste in buying robot

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 24

The PGIMER has earned rap of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) for haste in purchasing the Rs 25-crore surgery robot, without even ensuring the installation site and availability of staff.

In its audit report for 2013-14 released recently, the CAG has directed the institution to explain why it failed to ensure that the ground work was done before placing the order despite having a “full-fledged engineering wing”, leading to a delay of 1.5 years in installing the machine.

The robot was purchased in July 2013 and 80 per cent (about Rs 15.49 crore) of the payment was made to the supplier in the same month. The machine was, however, installed in November 2014 (after a gap of almost 1.5 years).

“Despite having a full-fledged engineering wing, the PGI could not assess the readiness of the pre-required site for the installation. For what this engineering wing is if it could not prepare the site?” the auditor noted in Para 2 of the audit report.

Due to advance payments of Rs 15.49 crore, the PGI suffered a loss of Rs 1.55 crore on the account of interest.

Three months ago, Chandigarh Tribune had highlighted how the robot remained underutilised for two months after it was made functional in the Department of Urology.

Against the initial aspirations (as projected by the department), the robot failed to help in reducing the waiting list for surgeries and has rather escalated the cost of surgery to ten times (Rs 50,000) that of laproscopic surgeries (Rs 5,000).

While the PGIMER officials had cited staff shortage as the prime reason for underutilisation of the robot (twice a week), they failed to explain why was the availability of staff not considered during the two-year struggle (from 2011 to 2013) that went into seeking approval for the purchase of the Rs 25-crore machine.

Till January 2015, the robot had performed only 22 surgeries against a total of 400 surgeries performed using laproscopy. Also, the waiting period for patients still ranges from six weeks to six months.