Eleven years after it was decided to create a national facility for breeding primates to meet the needs of biomedical research, the centre is yet to be established, reveals the latest Comptroller General of India (CAG) report
tabled in Parliament on Tuesday. According to the report, the proposal was submitted by the National Institute for Research in Reproductive Health (NIRRH), Mumbai in March 1999 for setting up of a “Non-Human Primate breeding centre” with an aim to provide disease free healthy animals of known pedigree for research programmes of the existing institutes in the country, as many researchers were compelled to either suspend or curtail their ongoing research involving use of non human primates, said the report. However, the CAG revealed that “failure on part of NIRRH led not only to non achievement of the objectives of establishing the facility but also blockade of funds of `14.15 crores and unfruitful expenditure of `8.90 crores already incurred on the project.”
The CAG report says that even as the Union health ministry directed Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to release the grant-in-aid from 2002-03 for initiation of activity, it was observed that “there were frequent changes in the designs of the buildings. Due to these changes, NIRRH could finalise the revised EFC document for `68.24 crore in September 2009”. The report further goes on to say that Phase I of the project which consisted of construction of a quarantine building was incomplete as of March 2011, despite its completion date being March 2007. Against the total grant of `14.54 crore received between January 2003 and March 2007, `5.64 crore remained blocked with NIRRH.
The CAG report also revealed that equipment worth crores remained “uninstalled for over years”. As far as the phase II is concerned, for which funds were allotted by the department of science and technology, the work was yet to be started.