Authorities detect moves to create artificial drug shortage

Nadira GUNATILLEKE

Health authorities recently detected moves by some officials attached to the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation (SPC) to create an artificial drug shortage in the country by next year, Health Ministry sources said.

According to the sources, the authorities recently spotted 2270 unattended files stored in the SPC and inquired about them from the relevant officials. The plan was revealed at that time.

The 2270 unattended files were stored at the SPC for six months. Those files are related to drug purchasing and the drugs required for the next year.

Out of 2270 files, 270 had already received tender approvals and other 2000 files were to be presented to tender boards.

The files were stored at the SPC without being attended to because they have not received technical reports from the consultants. The consultants had not been informed about submitting technical reports.

The authorities immediately ordered the relevant officials to inform consultants about filing technical reports and obtaining them from the consultants after paying them Rs. 5000 for each report. The authorities ordered officials to clear the whole lot of files within one week, the sources said.

Further inquiries revealed that the officials purposely delayed work on the 2270 files because they wanted to create an artificial delay in purchasing drugs which will enable them to go into local purchasing of drugs.

Local purchasing of drugs costs millions of rupees more, than normal drug purchasing which is done through tenders. The commission from local purchasing goes into the pockets of officials, the sources added.