Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Aug 30: The Health and Medical Education Ministry seems bent upon stalling the working of JK Medical Supplies and Procurement Corporation by denying it the requisite funds and manpower and reportedly mooting a proposal to rob the Corporation from mandatory requirement of being headed by an IAS officer to any other person including a doctor to dilute its sanctity and keep it completely under the Government control.
The Corporation, which had prepared a blue print after long drawn efforts to provide quality drugs to the patients and keeping the rates under check, was intentionally being deprived of the funds and staff to stall its functioning.
Official sources in GAD told the Excelsior that there had been a categoric provision that the Corporation should be headed by an IAS officer. However, the proposal was not going well with some politicians of ruling party, who reportedly want to install own man as Chairman of the Corporation and only then release the budget to it.
Sources said the Corporation was rendered handicapped in the absence of any funds as it was unable to go for purchases. It only got 25 per cent funds from the budget but they were too less to make the Corporation implement its plans and policies for purchase of quality drugs after checks.
Even in terms of staff, the Corporation’s requests were not considered by the Ministry. The Corporation has staff strength of only 14 and its request for eight more staff members was gathering dust in the Health Ministry.
Sources said after long drawn hard work, the Corporation had drafted its programmes and policies under which it had prepared a Quality Manual and Quality Check Procedure through which it proposed to procure the medicines by e-tendering, purchase the drugs of standard quality and hold frequent checks of all batches of all purchased tablets to ensure that the patients get quality and not spurious drugs.
The Corporation has also prepared Dug Monitoring and Management Software, which could detect expiry of drugs and date of their manufacturing. Yet another important proposal mooted by it pertained to setting up of five to seven Quality Test Drug Labs in the State itself so that the drugs could be checked spontaneously and only quality drugs were approved and given to the patients. The inferior quality drugs, if any, would have been rejected immediately. The Corporation planned to test each and every batch of the drugs so that the Companies couldn’t indulge in any foul play and the patients get quality drugs. It has also proposed random quality tests as another measure to keep the quality well under check. Adding to it, the Corporation has also floated a unique idea of testing the drugs in coded manner so that there was no leakage of reports to the Companies. It wanted to provide affordable and quality drugs to the patients.
Presently, there was no proper mechanism in place for quality purchase of drugs as no tendering was held for branded drugs. The drugs were supplied first while their testing was held later. In between the period, a number of drugs were consumed by the patients, posing risk to their lives.
Though the Drug Controller lifted the samples, their supply to the hospitals was not stopped, sources said.
Sources said despite taking series of initiatives to improve quality of drugs and provide standard medicines to the patients, some top politicians in collusion with officials were bent upon changing the very composition of the Corporation to suit his own interests as he was unable to run his writ the way he wants in the present Corporation.
They said the politicians went to remove the IAS officer and capture the Corporation indirectly by posting the man of their own choice. However, they added, if these persons succeeds in his designs, the patients would be deprived of quality drugs and the suppliers of inferior quality medicines would continue to have their say.
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