Andhra Pradesh Pharmacy Council (APPC), which had been rendering yeoman service to the pharmacists of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, even after bifurcation, will continue to serve both Telangana (TS) and Andhra Pradesh (AP) for 10 years until Telangana forms its own body as per the new Andhra Pradesh reorganization Act.
APPC is a statutory body constituted in the year 1959 by the Government of Andhra Pradesh under the provisions of the Pharmacy Act of 1948 consisting of six members elected by registered pharmacists amongst themselves, five members nominated by Government of Andhra Pradesh, one member elected by A P Medical Council and three ex-officio members.
The main objective of the APPC was to regulate the profession and practice of pharmacy in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The prime function of the APPC is to grant registration to the eligible pharmacists possessing requisite qualification as per the provisions of section 32(2) of the Pharmacy Act and to enforce the necessary provisions of the Pharmacy Act 1948 and Andhra Pradesh Pharmacy Council Rules, 1955.
Usually all the state councils are bound to function under an elected body. However in Andhra Pradesh, due to many hiccups, many a time, elections to Pharmacy council could not be conducted regularly. Though elections were held in 2003 and 2010 for the election of six members from registered pharmacists, this council has no legally and validly elected council body or president.
According to the authorities, the registration and renewal fees were fixed under Andhra State Pharmacy Council Rules, 1955 which are meagre to maintain and conduct elections regularly. Thereafter the State Government enhanced fees in certain cases. Now the council is functioning under the in-charge of Director General, Drugs & Copyrights, Drugs Control Administration, (APDCA) with a regular registrar, three regular junior assistants and eight out-sourcing staff.
APPC gets a leg up with web portal
The Andhra Pradesh Pharmacy Council received a boost with the recent launch of a website. Initially informative, the authorities at the council are hoping to bring in more changes to it and make it more dynamic by offering online registration and renewal services to the pharmacists.
With the launch of the new website, APPC has finally embarked on the digital front to serve the pharmacy graduates across the state. In addition to this, the authorities of the council are also aiming to induct more employees to oversee the website services and thereby decreasing the work burden and at the same time improve the services by delivering registrations and renewals on a strict time line.
Though the idea of a new website for the council was floated long back during the tenure of Annappa Reddy, the former president of the council, due to various administrative and legal and financial problems the idea was put on hold.
Nagaraju, the newly appointed registrar of the council, has been instrumental in finally getting the long awaited website. Though its present status is only static and informative, the registrar is hoping to make it more dynamic and is planning to provide the registration and renewal services online.
If this becomes fully operational, the pharmacy students can avail online registration facilities and will be free from hassles of physically appearing and harassment by brokers and corrupt officials, informed a pharmacy graduate.
Unfortunately, the council had been facing various problems with regard to election of its governing body, inadequate infrastructure facilities, lack of adequate staff etc. All these factors have culminated in delay of the registration and renewal process for the pharmacy graduates.
Particularly with regard to lack of an elected governing body, the officials at the council’s office are left orphaned as they are not able to take any clear cut decisions to improve the facilities. Moreover as the pharmacy council is working under temporary -in- charge of Andhra Pradesh Drug control administration (APDCA), it often gets a step motherly treatment, opined sources at the council.
“We are planning to go full throttle online by offering online registrations and renewals in the next three months. Since at present our new website is only static and informative, we are planning to make it dynamic by updating the entire database of the registered pharma professionals in the state. At present we have procured all required servers and computers, but we are not having adequate staff to do the data entry work, said Pola Nagaraju, Registrar of APPC.
Earlier the Andhra Pradesh Pharmacy Council had faced a lot of problems as there was no permanent registrar for the council. At present there is no elected governing body, as the earlier president of the Council was declared unelected by the High Court of Andhra Pradesh in 2012 due to internal conflicts between two groups.
After P Nagaraju took charge as APPC Registrar a year ago, all pending registration work is now completed. “Every month we are registering about 2000 candidates. We are seeing that there is no delay what so ever in dispatching the fresh registrations. We have requested all the universities and colleges to submit the data of all the passed pharmacy graduates in a CD to the council every year so that it makes our work easy to verify and make the registrations speedier without any delay,” said the registrar.
The launch of the new website has given a big relief to the pharmacy graduates as they need not come to the office travelling long distances just for the sake of obtaining application forms. Earlier pharmacy graduates used to stand in long queues just for collecting the forms and take tokens for their turn. Now the students can download the renewal and registration application forms from the website www.appharmacycouncil.gov.in and get enrol themselves with much ease.
At present there are more 80,000 registered pharmacists in united Andhra Pradesh. About 280 pharmacy colleges from across both the states of AP and TS are churning out more than 24,000 pharmacy graduates annually.