The Anti-Corruption Commission on Wednesday initiated an inquiry into the allegation that low-quality products were passed as N95 masks to some government hospitals by a local company.
The commission took the decision of launching inquiry at a meeting held at the commission head office in the capital with ACC chairman Iqbal Mahmood in the chair, ACC director for public relations Pranab Kumar Bhattacharjee told the media after the meeting.
He said that the commission will assign an officer to conduct the inquiry and collect the probe report of the health ministry in this regard.
Earlier on June 3, the commission sent a letter to the health ministry asking for the probe findings into the allegation.
The health ministry recently took some departmental steps following the report of its committee that was formed on April 21.
The government formed its probe committee amid a series of criticisms as physician leaders and experts concerned said that the matter warranted a thorough investigation.
They were surprised at the indifference and wondered how the products, produced in and marketed from the USA, inside packets were changed by a Bangladeshi company.
They argued that the packets with N95 label were obviously printed in Bangladesh and suspected an ill motive behind it.
Meanwhile, the company that supplied the masks, the JMI group, said by way of an explanation that it was a mistake they had made during the packaging.
After the COVID-19 was detected in Bangladesh, the Central Medical Stores Depot supplied to government hospitals personal protective equipment that included packets of masks labelled as N95 masks.
But upon opening the packets government physicians found ordinary face masks in them.
The CMSD and its vendor JMI in separate newspaper advertisements explained that ordinary face masks were wrongly put in N95 packets and it was a packaging mistake.
The CMSD in its newspaper advertisement said that reports of a collaborative scam between the health minister, his son, the health secretary and the Health Services director general behind the supply of the fake N95 masks were baseless and politically motivated.
JMI in newspaper advertisements explained that it supplied 20,600 masks mistakenly placed in N95 packets.