The Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) yet to take a decision on formula of running the new NIPER under the public private partnership model, is mulling over different ideas to generate revenues with the help of private partners to make them fully functional and autonomous.
Sources said the DoP is actively considering various options of generating revenues for the new NIPERs under the PPP mode by taking up entire running of the institutes or leaving operations partly to the private partners. A proposal under consideration is to leave some revenue generating activities like running hostels, auditorium, guest house, recreation and sports, maintenances etc to the private partners.
A suggestion also has come for full or part running of the exclusive courses under the PPP in some NIPERs. Though the detailed project report had suggested four types of collaboration, the DoP is yet to make a final decision yet on these proposals.
The department is also sitting for long now on the process of short-listing the interested partners. Though the department had invited expression of interests long back from the likely partners to be part of the PPP model, sources said, the DoP was still to finalise the process. The valuation of the bids from the private parties is still going on.
The new NIPERs, set up at Hajipur in Bihar, Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh, Ahmedabad in Gujarat, Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, Kolkata in West Bengal and Guwahati in Assam, are currently run with the help of mentor institutes already existing in these places. The government had approved setting up of six more institutes under NIPER in 2007 initially for two years, which had since been extended up to 2011. Some streams of pharmaceutical sciences had already been started in the new institutes with the help of the mentor institutes in the respective places.
However, even after three years now, the original plan of PPP is yet to be approved and introduced and the institutes are still lacking in infrastructure and faculty. The department has been going slow in the process to make them fully functional and autonomous, it is alleged.
The department is also planning to launch some short term courses in the new NIPERs as per the detailed project report submitted by the consultant firm, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Pvt Ltd. Courses like those on intellectual property rights concerning the pharma industry, short term courses for the employees of the pharma companies, course on emerging sectors like biopharma are being planned in these institutes.