Las New York City authorities have auctioned off the surplus medical devices and protection products that were purchased with public money in the first months of the pandemic covid-19 for very low prices, as reported on Tuesday by the local media The City.
The newspaper publishes an investigation into the auctions carried out by the new local management for Eric Adams since last summer and points out that so far numerous supplies have been sold for only 500 thousand dollars that at the peak of the pandemic, when they were in short supply, cost the city 224 million.
Among those supplies, he cites some 3,000 respirators that the then Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered to be manufactured and they cost 12 million dollars, which were never used and were auctioned this January for 24 thousand 600 dollars – after being classified as “junk” that “does not work” – to a company Long Island (NY).
The City quotes a spokesman for the local administrative services department (DCAS), which is in charge of the auctions, and it maintains that the expense occurred at a time of crisis with the aim of creating a reserve of products for 90 days, and part of the surplus has been donated to NGOs and various countries.
The newspaper attributes the sale of current balances to the fact that former mayor De Blasio hampered the supervision of contracts to deal with the first wave of covid-19 and suggests the city paid millions for defective goods or products that weren’t even made, in addition to shelling out inflated prices.
HCM
