Messy Emergency Procurement

Monday, March 15, 2021

Scores of hospitals sent back hundreds of thousands Covid-19 test kits from the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB). The Finance and Development Supervisory Agency (BPKP) discovered discrepancies of up to hundreds of thousand reagent kits recorded and distributed worth almost Rp40 billion up to September 2020. Meanwhile, the Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), which scrutinized procurement documents up to December 2020, discovered potential losses sustained by the state amounting to almost Rp170 billion. A businessman who enjoyed the largest portion of direct appointment for reagent procurements is a colleague of BNPB Chairman Doni Monardo. This investigation is made possible by a collaboration of Tempo with the Investigative Journalists Club and ICW.

A pile of Sansure Biotech reagent kits, returned by hospitals, at the BGR Warehouse H in Kelapa Gading, Jakarta. Tempo . tempo : 173223041392.

ANTONIUS Oktavian’s joy was very short-lived. In mid-August 2020, the Head of the Papua Health Research and Development Office had received 12,997 coronavirus detection kits. To Oktavian, the reagent kits were like gold from heaven: he had run out of reagents as the number of coronavirus patients in Papua continued to soar.

His elation fizzled out the minute he tested a positive Covid-19 specimen. The China-made Sansure reagent showed the

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