In a major setback for Bollywood superstar Salman Khan, his foundation, Being Human, has been slapped with a show cause notice by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai or the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). The corporation has threatened to blacklist the organisation for failing to set up concessional dialysis units in Bandra, Mumbai, even after a year of allotment of the project. Being Human was reportedly asked to set up 24 dialysis machines at Allied Cooperative Society on St John’s Road in Pali Hill.
However, it has failed to do so in over a year now. The foundation was also responsible for appointing staff and maintenance of the centre. “Being Human, which was shortlisted for running the dialysis centre at Bandra (West), had paid the bank guarantee and was granted all the necessary permissions to go ahead with the project. But with the project not taking off, we have issued them a show-cause notice warning that they would be blacklisted,” a senior civic official was quoted saying in a report by Mumbai Mirror.
BMC has reportedly started looking for an alternative to getting these dialysis units set up. The report also claims that in June 2016, BMC had invited proposals for setting up “12 dialysis centres, housing 199 dialysis machines which could perform up to 10,000 procedures a month, in the city on public private partnership (PPP) basis.”
Being Human had reportedly agreed to set up 24 machines at Allied Cooperative Society on St John’s Road in Pali Hill area at Bandra, Mumbai at Rs 339.50 against BMC’s rate of Rs 350. Under this deal, BMC was supposed to provide the space while Being Human had to take care of staff appointments and maintenance.
A BMC official was quoted as saying in the report that the foundation was aware of the consequences (blacklisting) if they failed to start the project on time. However, Loretta Lewis, a representative from Salman Khan’s NGO, said that no formal contract/MoU was signed.