New Delhi, Dec 18 (IANS): A parliamentary panel Wednesday pulled up the Tata Memorial Centre (TMC), a government institute for treatment of cancer, for not utilising funds and allowing the outlay to go waste.

"The committee takes a serious view on the matter that the approved outlay has been allowed to go waste and ultimately lapse in such a manner," the 31-member parliamentary committee said in its report tabled in parliament.

"The TMC has not been able to expand its activities despite the fact that there was no budgetary constraint.

"It has instead reiterated its routine and hackneyed reply that the Department of Atomic Energy is taking expeditious action for administrative and financial sanctions of plan projects," said the Committee on Science and Technology, Environment and Forest.

"The committee, therefore, recommends that administrative and procedural matters should in future be handled in a more proactive manner," it said.

The Mumbai-based Tata Memorial Centre is a premier institution that works for the treatment of cancer for the poor and the needy in the country.

In 1957, the union health ministry took over the Tata Memorial Hospital, a private enterprise. The administrative control of the centre was given to the Department of Atomic Energy in 1962.

"The committee feels that TMC must see its responsibilities through the prism of those who are suffering from the dreaded and deadly disease of cancer but has nobody to come to their rescue or their succour," it added.

The committee also recommended that the department of atomic energy focus its attention on research in the field of preventive oncology so that the incidence of cancer could be contained in the country.

In India, it is estimated that there are up to 2.5 million cancer patients at any given point of time with about 0.7 million new cases coming every year. Two-thirds of the new cancers are reported to be in advanced and incurable stages at the time of diagnosis.

More than 60 percent of the affected patients are in the prime of their life between the ages of 35 and 65 years.