KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 21 — Planned Preventive Maintenance has not been carried out at all government hospitals from 2013 till end of last year, according to the second series of the Auditor-General’s (A-G) 2015 Report released today.
In its report on the management of facility engineering maintenance services (FEMs), the A-G pointed out that government hospitals have also failed to show proof of suspended payment worth RM1.13 million for 95 assets that were unused, damaged or disposed of when the audit took place between September last year right up to May this year.
FEMs are one of five types of support medical services that have been privatised since January 1, 1997. These services were first farmed out to three companies but on April 1 last year, the Health Ministry signed a new 10-year deal with five private companies: Faber Medi-Serve Sdn Bhd, Radicare (M) Sdn Bhd, Beach Medivest Sdn Bhd, Sedafiat Sdn Bhd and One Medicare Sdn Bhd.
The audit report noted that while the overall management of the expenditure for the FEMs was good, there was weakness in the maintenance and payment by the private companies that gave less than satisfactory results.
At Hospital Sibu in Sarawak, the audit team found a huge disparity in the procurement value for 24 assets, from RM90 to RM9,620. However, it did not elaborate on what these assets were.
It also found that at Hospital Sibu and the Hospital Sultan Abdul Halim in Sungai Petani, Kedah, 43 asses worth RM50,203 were categorised as Assets Not Found (V4L) but which were not entered as such in the registry to enable follow-up.
A bigger puzzle for the auditors was at the Hospital Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah in Temerloh, Pahang, where it found no assets marked as V4L in the master list.
However, the FEM concessionaires told the hospital in 16 letters dated between 2012 and 2014 that a total of 168 assets were categorised under V4L.
The federal auditors found that the public hospitals were not supervising the FEMs effectively. But they added that the reason for this inefficiency was due to “excessive workload” by the hospital operations engineer who was charged with that duty.
The audit team found that the average number of FEMs needing monitoring stood at between 2,109 and 6,609 units per hospital, as at April 30, 2016.
The A-G advised the Health Ministry on the necessity to carry out preventive maintenance according to schedule and also strongly called for penalties or fines to be imposed on the concessionaires that fail to comply with procedures.
It also recommended a thorough investigation on the monitoring of maintenance works and payments as well as the monitoring of V4L management in every hospital across the country.
The Health Ministry should also consider restructuring or redeploying more staff towards becoming hospital operations engineers or as their assistants for more effective FEMs monitoring, the A-G said.
