Parliament

FPBS audit report reveals missing purchase documents

April 11, 2019 7:20 am

The Fiji Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Services Audit report has revealed that some documents for the purchase of biomedical equipment are missing.

During the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, the report reveals a lack of diligence in procuring the equipment and some items were purchased outside of the procurement process.

Fiji Pharmaceutical & Biomedical Services Acting Head Jeremaia Kalo, admits that a lack of biomedical officers and no formal procedures to follow contributed to the missing purchase documents.

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“We have identified that it’s a process gap that we are trying to improve, so we have develop some improvement process in terms of how the filing is done, not only manually but electronically as well. Our strategy was to beef up our HR so we have recruited biomedical officers, the ministry has identified new positions and at the same time our procurement team as well.”

Kalo says the ministry now has a formal process for the evaluation of any purchase of biomedical products with standard operating procedures to be followed.