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Today's topics: * Massive medical corruption forces World Bank to halt loans to India. - 1 messages, 1 author http://groups.google.com/group/BM_discussion/browse_thread/thread/e84d35d0fb29740f * सच् च> भ>रतो&य - 1 messages, 1 author http://groups.google.com/group/BM_discussion/browse_thread/thread/d3a1b64f84a087a ============================================================================== TOPIC: Massive medical corruption forces World Bank to halt loans to India. http://groups.google.com/group/BM_discussion/browse_thread/thread/e84d35d0fb29740f ============================================================================== == 1 of 1 == Date: Mon, Apr 3 2006 1:48 am From: Jagannath Chatterjee http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEH20060403001203&Title=Top+Stories&rLink=0 World Bank puts on hold a billion dollars for health Monday April 3 2006 10:33 IST NEW DELHI: In a setback for the UPA government’s flagship health programme, the World Bank has withheld 350 million dollars of funding for the Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) project of the National Rural Health Mission. While the government is going ahead with the project without the Bank’s fiscal support, funding for five more proposed health sector projects, totalling over a billion dollars, have also been put on hold by the Bank. With a view to resolve the crisis that has been brewing since June 2005, Finance Minister P Chidambaram and World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz have been involved in intense talks. Finance Ministry officials indicate that talks with the Bank have “intensified” over the last one month and are now “delicately poised”. The first phase of the RCH programme was introduced by the Department of Family Welfare in 1997, as per a strategy suggested by the World Bank to bring down child and maternal mortality figures in the country. With the first phase implemented by June 2004, the second phase was being seen as vital to achieving, among other things, India’s target to eradicate polio by 2007. But since June 2005, the World Bank has stopped funding for RCH 2 and five other important health projects, including those meant to counter the spread of AIDS and Tuberculosis. The reason: in March 2005, the Bank received complaints alleging fraud and corruption in the procurement of pharmaceuticals for the RCH Program 1. The World Bank’s Integrity Department began an investigation into these allegations and it’s still going on. The Finance Ministry, admitting certain weaknesses in the procurement processes, began working closely with the Bank to evolve an action plan to check the possibility of fraud and strengthening project governance. With the RCH Program 2 in mind, the Bank and the Finance Ministry had put in place a Governance and Accountability Action Plan (GAAP), which was to go to the Bank’s Executive Board for approval in June 2005. The fraud complaints had already been factored into the GAAP and everyone at the Bank was convinced about the new action plan, says the Finance Ministry. But the plan never reached the Bank’s Board. Incidentally, in June 2005, Wolfowitz, the former US Deputy Defence Secretary took over as the World Bank President. Over the last few months, the Bank has taken a strong stance against corruption, canceling or relooking at loans to countries like Chad, Congo, Kenya, Bangladesh, Argentina. The government has been telling the Bank to examine all projects, if it wishes, but not stop the funding altogether. The government has also welcomed specific suggestions from the Bank to improve project implementation and monitoring processes. Finance Minister P Chidambaram is said to have told Wolfowitz that “we are on the same wavelength... complete transparency and integrity in project implementation is imperative.” In response to a questionnaire sent by this website's newspaper, the Bank said: “A couple of problems have arisen in some projects that we are working cooperatively with the Government of India to fix. To allow more time for discussion... on the most effective ways to address these issues moving forward, we have postponed consideration of a second RCH program and several other health sector loans.” Funds for these are on hold • Reproductive and Child Health (Phase 2), implementing agency Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Funds: $350 m • Vector Borne Disease Control Project, Govt of India. Funds: $200 m • HIV/AIDS III, National AIDS Control Organisation, Govt of India. Funds: $200 m • Second National Tuberculosis Control Project, Central TB Division, Govt of India. Funds: $170 m • Karnataka Health Systems, Karnataka govt. Funds: $141.83 m • West Bengal Health Systems, West Bengal govt. Funds: $75 m "Our ideal is not the spirituality that withdraws from life but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit." - Aurobindo. --------------------------------- New Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Call regular phones from your PC for low, low rates. ============================================================================== TOPIC: सच् च> भ>रतो&य http://groups.google.com/group/BM_discussion/browse_thread/thread/d3a1b64f84a087a ============================================================================== == 1 of 1 == Date: Tues, Apr 4 2006 11:55 am From: "Vinay Khaitan" I can guide you towards many ways to write unicode. That depends on your operating system. Both Windows and Linux comes with Inscript keyboard for writing Unicdoe hindi. But phonetic hindi is available for both linux and windows. Either you need to learn Inscript(better) or installed phonetic version for kickstart. On 4/3/06, amritesh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Rajnish ji, > Do you have any plans or strategy for it...I am also eager to do the > same as our messages are not reaching to most of our Hindi speaking > people. > Amritesh > > > > > ============================================================================== You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BM_discussion" group. To post to this group, send email to BM_discussion@googlegroups.com or visit http://groups.google.com/group/BM_discussion To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change the way you get mail from this group, visit: http://groups.google.com/group/BM_discussion/subscribe To report abuse, send email explaining the problem to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ============================================================================== Google Groups: http://groups.google.com
