USAID paid $500 a gallon for gas, failed to catch $500,000 in overpayments on long-delayed Afghan hospital

Hospital in Gardez, Afghanistan. ((Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction))

Construction of a $14.6 million hospital in Gardez, Afghanistan, is 23 months behind schedule and costing taxpayers more than half a million dollars in overpayments the U.S. Agency for International Development and its contractor failed to catch.

And once it's finished, there's no guarantee the Afghan government can even afford to run the facility, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction.

The 100-bed hospital is 12 times larger than the one it will replace and will cost at least five times more to run, the IG said.

Its original completion date was Nov. 24, 2011, at a projected cost of $13.5 million.

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