Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) has decided to issue Identity Cards with code numbers to the teachers of all pharmacy colleges in the country in a bid to crack down on teaching staff who take up jobs in more than one pharmacy colleges exploiting the severe staff crunch in the colleges.

The PCI action in this regard comes in the wake of reports that a large number of pharmacy colleges are hoodwinking the authorities by reportedly running the colleges without proper faculties, thanks largely to the indiscriminate manner of giving permissions for opening pharmacy colleges in the country by the AICTE.

At the time of inspections by the AICTE team before giving permission to start the college, these institutions will hoodwink the team by arranging to parade the required staff on the day of site inspection. But, once the site inspection is over, this arrangement will come to an end as there is hardly any follow-up inspections by the AICTE, mainly due to lack of staff.

In order to verify the ground realities in this regard, the PCI some time back had embarked on a series of surprise inspections on the pharmacy colleges. After these inspections, which found several irregularities, the PCI chose to act tough and decided to issue I Cards with code numbers to each of the teachers to put an end to this malpractice.

PCI president Dr B Suresh, who is also the president of Indian Pharmaceutical Association (IPA), said that the AICTE should be blamed for this problem. "AICTE indiscriminately gives permissions to open pharmacy colleges without consulting other statutory organizations like PCI, which is mandatory. Before giving permission to open new colleges, several criteria should be met including the availability of faculty. But, the AICTE simply continues to give permission indiscriminately", Dr Suresh said.

According to sources, during the last two years the AICTE has given permission to around 500 pharmacy colleges in the country. . In the last one year, it has given permission to 120 colleges in Andhra Pradesh alone. There are more than 800 pharmacy colleges in the country. While it has been on a permission giving spree to the pharmacy colleges in the country, it was not conducting the mandatory follow-up inspections to ensure that these colleges are run by a proper professional team.