JIACC implicates hospital service provider, officials in graft case

AMMAN — The Jordan Integrity and Anti-Corruption Commission (JIACC) on Wednesday referred to the prosecutor general the case of a housekeeping company at Al Bashir Hospital allegedly involved in financial corruption.

JIACC’s investigators revealed “financial, administrative and legal violations, as well as squandering of hundreds of thousands of public funds”, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

A JIACC source told Petra that the contract between the hospital and the company stipulated that the latter provide administrative and technical services, including culinary, machine maintenance, cleaning and gardening, among others, for two years ending in April 2019.

The total value of the contract is around JD5.1 million, and the agreed size of manpower was set at 793 employees, including technicians and specialists, the source said. 

The findings of the investigation showed that the company allegedly reduced the number of workers significantly, in violation of the contract, resulting in lower-quality services. Company employees and hospital officials were reportedly involved in these illegal practices. 

The source cited disorganised paperwork and bookkeeping with no or little oversight by the suspected hospital officials, practices that led to wasting hundreds of thousands of dinars of the public money.

JIACC decided to keep the case open and ordered all state hospitals to provide it with files related to contracted house keeping and maintenance companies to examine them, driven by the aforementioned case of Amman-based Al Bashir, the largest state-run hospital and a target of criticism by the public and the media over decades.   

The source told Petra that labour attendance registers had not been monitored or examined for a long time, by neither the hospital nor the company, which makes it hard to use them as proof of attendance or non-attendance.

Earlier in the month, the newly appointed Al Bashir Public Hospital Director Mahmoud Zureigat received death threats after he exposed an alleged corruption case in the facility, which led to an attack against a hospital official.

The director of the services unit was transferred to the intensive care unit after being attacked by 100 to 120 workers whom he had fired for failing to report to work, according to Zureigat.

It was reported that hundreds of these workers had accepted JD50 out of a salary of JD300 to stay home, while the rest went to line the pockets of corrupted executives at the company in question and the allegedly collaborating hospital officials.  

The director said that the attack came following the victim’s revelation that 800 workers were receiving salaries without actually attending work.

Minister of Interior Samir Mubaidin pledged to guarantee full protection for Zureigat after receiving the threats.