MDMK’s State Youth Wing secretary V. Eswaran on Friday demanded the State government to publish a white paper on COVID-19 expenses, following a Right to Information (RTI) Act reply that said that the government had spent over ₹ 142 crore on procuring ventilators in four months.
The reply from the Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation (TNMSC) said that it placed orders for 2,205 ventilators worth ₹ 142,73,56,099.62 from February 1,2020 to May 21, 2020 to various government institutions in the State. Each ventilator was bought for ₹ 6.47 lakh, Mr. Eswaran said. He said that he filed the RTI application on June 2, 2020, while the reply was dated December 16, 2020.
Apart from ventilators, the TNMSC had also placed orders for 15,45,700 RT-PCR kits worth ₹ 170.78 crore, 22,13,156 RNA extraction kits at ₹ 28.46 crore and 15,12,162 Viral Transport Medium kits worth ₹ 24.53 crore between February 1,2020 and May 21, 2020. A total of ₹ 265.73 crore was allocated to TNMSC under the State Disaster Response Fund, the RTI reply said.
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