[Southern + July 14 News] According to Indian media reports, Indian Prime Minister Modi established PM CARES Foundation (Prime Minister's Citizen Assistance in Emergency Situations Fund) on March 28 and made it public to the public The fundraising is used to help India deal with the new crown pneumonia epidemic. Recently, the Prime Minister's Office, which is responsible for managing the foundation, has been questioned for repeatedly rejecting requests from the government and the media to disclose information about the donations.
According to reports, the ex-officio chairman of PM CARES Foundation is Prime Minister Modi, who appointed the Minister of Defense, Minister of Interior and Minister of Finance, who are also the People’s Party, as the ex officio trustees of the foundation. The foundation is managed by the Prime Minister’s Office. Responsible for management. Since only members of the ruling party are involved in the foundation organization, and India has a similar PMNFR foundation (Prime Minister's National Relief Fund) established in 1947, the transparency and legitimacy of the PM CARES foundation Sex was met with a lot of criticism when it was founded.
According to reports, after Modi publicly called for "all Indians to donate generously" in March, many ordinary people, Bollywood artists and Indian companies have publicly stated that they have contributed to the fund. It is estimated that the PM CARES Foundation has donated more than 1.3 billion U.S. dollars since March. According to the foundation’s website, as of July 14th, the amount of donations used was 40.3 million U.S. dollars. The usefulness has also been questioned by the public.
According to the foundation, 26 million US dollars of the donation were used to purchase 50,000 "Made in India" ventilators, but this contract did not go through public bidding. In addition, two top hospitals in Mumbai and New Delhi complained that the ventilators they received had many defects. Some of them could not even perform the basic functions of oxygen supply and were completely unsuitable for practical use. Many members of the opposition party called the so-called plan to purchase ventilators just "a scam by the Modi government."
Later, when the media and the public applied to the PM CARES Foundation to publish a report containing donors, the number of donations, and details of the use of donations, the Prime Minister’s Office stated that “the foundation is not Many Indians said they could not accept this reason. An Indian law student said that the foundation is completely managed by Indian government officials. The domain name of the official website also uses the government-specific .gov.in suffix. The official website also uses the Indian national emblem logo that can only be used by the government. The Prime Minister’s Office called the foundation As a private organization, "people can't help but want to ask what secrets the government hides."
In response to these queries, the Modi government stated that the foundation has not committed any illegal activities.
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