CAG highlights shortfall in production of fuzes by Ordnance Factories

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has highlighted lacuna in the operations of (Defence Services) Ordnance Factories.

The CAG Report on (Defence Services) Ordnance Factories Major said that shortfalls in production were noticed for eight types of empty fuzes mainly due to material constraints and quality problems. This resulted in slippages in issue of related ammunitions spare filled fuzes leading to critical deficiency of seven types of ammunition (deficiency ranging from 32 to 74 per cent) and five types of spare fuzes (deficiency ranging from 41 to 94 per cent) as on March 2018, the CAG said.

Due to non-availability of spare fuzes, the Army had stock of ammunitions worth ₹403.27 crore lying in unusable condition, the CAG said.

The production of fuzes in Ordnance Factories (OFs) is based on the test check of OFs for the period 2013-2014 to 2017-2018. There were mismatches in the availability of empty fuze from in-house production as well as from trade sources and their filling capacity in OFs.

The CAG also said that rules and procedures stipulated in Procurement Manual of Ordnance Factories were not followed completely in its e-procurement system. “Transparent bidding could not be ensured as instances of submission of multiple bids from a single machine and use of same Digital Signature Certificate by multiple users were noticed. The e-procurement system lacked appropriate checks for capturing duplicate e-mail ID/alternate e-mail ID/phone number, invalid PAN and phone number etc.”

The CAG added that the same firm being developer and maintenance agency of the portal, database of Defence Organization may be at risk of misuse by a private entity. The Ordnance Factories also continued their payments and receipts of government money partially through manual method.