The government has scrapped the contractual appointment of Dr Abul Kalam Azad as the director general of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) on Thursday, a day after the president accepted his resignation.
In a gazette notification, the Ministry of Public Administration said that his contract with the government and his appointment has been annulled from July 21.
Amid a series of medical scams over Covid-19 tests, Azad stepped down as the chief of the government’s health services on Tuesday. President Abdul Hamid accepted his resignation the next day.
Prof Azad’s move comes at a time when the DGHS and people running the institution came under spotlight over its poor handling of Covid-19 management.
However, Azad claimed that the reason for him stepping down from the post is his deteriorating health condition.
Prof Azad, who was the first-ever Grade 1 secretary in the country in this post, was criticized heavily in the wake of several Covid-19 related controversies surrounding the government agency and different private hospitals in Dhaka city.
The controversies surrounding Azad
Prof Azad was first criticized for his poor management of the returnees from China, the place of origin of the global pandemic, on February 1.
When the first three cases of coronavirus in the country were reported on March 8, he was heavily criticized.
Later, his decision to stop taking questions from the media also generated criticism.
However, the biggest controversy he was involved in was his stance over the N95 scam. His directorate transferred several officials from Mudga General Hospital soon after the scam was revealed.
The decision of DGHS to replace IEDCR from the leading role of managing Covid-19 testing facilities in the country, and imposing fees for Covid-19 tests at the government facilities, also drew flak from different quarters.
Following the discovery of unprecedented corruption, irregularities and fraudulent activities in Covid-19 sample collection, testing, and treatment of patients by Regent Hospital and JKG Health Care, both of which were cleared by the DGHS, Prof Azad once again found himself in the middle of controversy.
His resignation has come at a time when the lack of coordination between the Health Ministry and the DGHS in efficiently dealing with the pandemic, which has killed over 2,700 people across the country till date, has come to light.
Letters, statements, and explanations
On June 11, responding to a ministry letter seeking explanation, the DGHS in a statement said it had signed the agreement with Regent Hospital following orders from senior officials at the Health Ministry.
It also claimed that the agreement was signed on condition that the hospital would renew its expired licence as soon as possible.
The next day, the ministry asked Prof Azad to explain in three days what they meant by orders from senior ministry officials, what was considered before the contract was signed, and what was done to ensure the conditions set in the agreement were met afterwards.
The back-to-back statement and letter from the DGHS and the ministry, respectively, came amid an uproar over Regent Hospital’s Uttara and Mirpur branches swindling thousands of unsuspecting patients out of millions of taka on the pretext of Covid-19 treatment.
On July 15, Prof Azad in his explanation told the ministry that the contract was signed following verbal orders from former Health Service Division secretary Md Asadul Islam.
That day, the current secretary, Mannan, told Dhaka Tribune: “As he [Prof Azad] claimed that the order was verbal, he has submitted documents as a part of his explanation, which we will have to scrutinize.”
“It will take two to three days to conclude as to who was responsible. We will then brief the media.”
Since the Regent Hospital scam came to light, the law enforcement agencies have arrested multiple people involved in fraudulent activities, including the hospital’s owner Shahed Karim alias Mohammad Shahed.
JKG Health Care Chairman Dr Sabrina Arif Chowdhury and her husband Ariful Chowdhury were also arrested for their alleged involvement in Covid-19 test scam.