Washington – OSHA has published three new fact sheets outlining workers’ rights and the procedures for filing whistleblower complaints.

Washington — Facing a staffing shortage and an increased number of complaints related to the COVID-19 pandemic, OSHA must improve the efficiency of its Whistleblower Protection Program, an audit report from the Department of Labor Office of Inspector General concludes.

Washington – Workers can now submit whistleblower complaints electronically, OSHA announced Dec. 4.

There have been some unsettling reports recently of large increases in the number of whistleblower complaints to OSHA related to COVID-19.

Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, is seen here in 2018.; Credit: Toya Sarno Jordan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Laurel Wamsley | NPR

Updated at 6:14 p.m. ET

The federal scientist who was ousted from his role as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority has filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

Rick Bright was a high-ranking federal scientist focused on vaccine development and a deputy assistant secretary with the Department of Health and Human Services. Last month, Bright said he was transferred to a "less impactful position" at the National Institutes of Health after he was reluctant to promote the use of drugs such as hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 patients.

In the complaint, Bright alleges a range of government wrongdoing by Dr. Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary of preparedness and response at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and others. Bright's boss was Kadlec, who in turn reported to HHS Secretary Alex Azar.

At the time of his removal, Bright said he had been ousted because of his "insistence" that the government spend funds on "safe and scientifically vetted solutions" to address the coronavirus crisis and not on "drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit."

Bright says in the complaint that he raised concerns about the need to prepare for the coronavirus in January but encountered opposition from Trump administration officials. He says he was transferred out of BARDA in retaliation.

According to the complaint, relations between Bright and Kadlec had been strained since 2018 or so, when Bright began "raising repeated objections to the outsized role Dr. Kadlec allowed industry consultants to play in securing contracts that Dr. Bright and other scientists and subject matter experts determined were not meritorious."

"Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, however, Dr. Bright became even more alarmed about the pressure that Dr. Kadlec and other government officials were exerting on BARDA to invest in drugs, vaccines, and other technologies without proper scientific vetting or that lacked scientific merit," the complaint continues. "Dr. Bright objected to these efforts and made clear that BARDA would only invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic in safe and scientifically vetted solutions and it would not succumb to the pressure of politics or cronyism."

The complaint alleges that Bright made repeated efforts to get the U.S. government to make adequate preparations for coronavirus, but was stymied by political appointees leading the HHS, including Azar.

HHS did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.

Bright says that in an effort to get the word out to the public about the risks associated with hydroxychloroquine, he shared with a reporter nonclassified emails between HHS officials that "discussed the drug's potential toxicity and demonstrated the political pressure to rush these drugs from Pakistan and India to American households." He says Azar and Kadlec removed him from his post within days of publication of an article about chloroquine because they suspected he was the article's source.

Bright says he stopped receiving a paycheck on April 20 and has not been assigned any further duties.

News of the whistleblower complaint was made public by his attorney on Tuesday.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

This is a whole different category of alleged impropriety.

Ex-official alleges cronyism, says warnings about supply shortages were ignored.

Rick Bright, the Department of Health and Human Services scientist who was reassigned last month and then filed a whistleblower complaint, disputed the White House's characterization that he was "disgruntled.""I am frustrated at a lack of urgency to get a head-start on developing life-saving tools for Americans," he said in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview."I was thinking that we could have done more to get those masks and supplies to them sooner, and if we had, would they still be alive today," Bright added. "It's a horrible thought to think about the time that past when we could have done something and we didn't."Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.Rick Bright, the Department of Health and Human Services scientist who was fired in April and then filed a whistleblower complaint