Kerala state drugs control ministerial staff organisation (KSDCMSO) has urged the government of Kerala to initiate steps to revamp and reorganise the state drugs control department by appointing an IAS officer as director general to head the department.
Raising the demand the organisation leaders submitted a memorandum to the chief minister and to the health minister in which they said either an officer in the cadre of IAS or IPS should be appointed to head the department, over and above the post of drugs controller.
An officer in the union civil service to control the enforcement wing can only prevent the clandestine activities of the drug mafia in the state and strengthen the organisation with efficient administrative power, the memorandum said.
The general secretary of KSDCMSO, K A Mohammad Ashraf said that due to the lack of efficient and experienced officers, the department of drugs control could not reach the level and standard of other departments. Though the department of ayurveda is a separate entity under the department, its operations are also monitored by the state drugs controller. He added that the staff organisation would reiterate the demand in its next general body which would be held at Thiruvananthapuram shortly.
He said the duties to be carried out by a drug inspector in one month include inspection on application for fresh licenses also. Instead of conducting inspections to check the flow of spurious/ substandard/ not of standard quality drugs, the inspectors are spending their valuable time to certify the area of medical stores for which the Drugs and Cosmetics Act does not stipulate the presence of a person with pharmacy background. The staff organisation demands that the duty to calculate the area of a fresh pharmacy can be assigned to a senior officer in the administrative wing of the department so that the drug inspectors can concentrate their time more on inspection work which is now for name sake only.
The general secretary of KSDCMSO also wanted the government to hand over the power for inspecting shops for licensing fresh retail and wholesale shops to ministerial officials.
Further to their demand, the ministerial staff wanted the government to retain the ayurveda wing under the sole control of the drugs control department because the licensing and conduct of stability test of drugs in the market are coming under the D&C Act. Government should initiate measures to upgrade the existing three regional offices of the ayurvedic wing to the level of assistant drugs control offices under the state drugs controller.
Ashraf said more than 10,000 ayurvedic retail outlets in the state are having no licenses and they should also be brought under licensed category.