Federal Reports

The Safety and Health Program is intended to provide guidance through effective training to support and sustain the U.S. Postal Service’s work environment. Industrial accidents involve personal injuries as well as property damage that can include motor vehicle damage under certain conditions. Nationwide, most industrial accidents involved mail carriers assigned to retail and delivery facilities from fiscal years 2017 to 2021.

Umer Hassan Mir, of South Amboy, New Jersey, was sentenced on February 8, 2023, in U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey, to five months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay restitution of $78,000. Mir pleaded guilty on July 12, 2022, to entering fraudulent charges on General Service Administration fuel cards and other corporate credit cards, including at least four cards assigned to Amtrak vehicles. Mir made the fraudulent charges from February 2018 through August 2021 while working as the manager and attendant at a gas station in Metuchen, New Jersey. Mir would manually enter credit card information he collected during legitimate fuel transactions into the point-of-sale terminal at the station and withdraw cash from the register in the amount of the fraudulent transactions. He used the funds from the fraudulent transactions to pay for personal expenses and to pay another gas station employee for working extra hours on Mir’s behalf.Agents and personnel from the Amtrak Office of Inspector General; General Services Administration OIG; and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Philadelphia Division, investigated this case.

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) assessed the oversight and stewardship of funds by the Northern Arizona VA Health Care System. The review team looked at four areas to determine if appropriate controls and oversight were in place for open obligations oversight, purchase card use, inventory and supply management, and pharmacy operations. The team reviewed available data from fiscal year 2022. The report includes the following findings:• Inactive obligations were not always being reviewed, some were not deobligated, and quality assurance reviews were not always completed.• The healthcare system did not always reconcile transactions promptly or consider using contracts.• The healthcare system needs to improve the accuracy of inventory data.• The healthcare system could increase inventory turnover and needs to ensure the required reconciliation process is completed.The OIG made 10 recommendations to the healthcare system director: ensure finance office staff and initiating services know to conduct reviews on all inactive open obligations and deobligate any identified excess funds; ensure finance office staff are conducting the accounting operations finance quality assurance review, including the review of undelivered orders; establish controls to confirm approving officials and purchase cardholders review their purchases and make sure contracting is used when appropriate; review for overcharges all invoices for continuous positive airway pressure machines; develop a control to ensure supporting documentation is received from vendors that ship directly to veterans; ensure all supplies are entered into the Generic Inventory Package; implement a plan to achieve an inventory turnover rate closer to the Veterans Health Administration-recommended level; develop a plan to align inventory management practices with VHA policy; and ensure reconciliation of invoices with purchase orders as required under the B09 reconciliation process, which is how VA medical center pharmacies assure they are making correct payments for the drugs they receive.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did not provide sufficient oversight of Project Airbridge, a COVID-19 initiative. Under unprecedented pressure to mitigate disruptions in global medical supply chains, FEMA established Project Airbridge.