Acute shortage of Store Verification Officers (SVO) in Kerala is holding up regular inspection of pharmacies under the Department of Health Services (DHS) and medical colleges. Timely scrutiny of drug purchases and distribution of medicines is also not taking placing at regular intervals because of the inadequacy of SVOs.

Another problem on account of the shortage is the difficulty faced by the retired employees of the government Pharmacies in getting their Non - Liability Certificates (NLC) as it was the duty of the SVO to check the records and give the NLC, informed sources said. There are several retired employees who had not received their NLC's for the past 4 to 5 years.

Currently, there are just 13 District SVO's and 1 State SVO in Kerala which is a very a small number considering the number of pharmacies in Kerala. The sources said that some of these existing SVOs are expected to retire soon making the problem still worse. At present, there is no SVO for Kasargode district.

There is a dire need to strengthen this department as there is a serious shortage of SVO's in the State. Since 1985 when the concept of SVO was introduced in Kerala, no SVO has not been appointed in Kasargode district. The SVO in Kannur has been taking care of Kasargode too. Earlier it was not done because Kannur and Kasargode were in same district. But now they are separate so a separate SVO should be appointed, said sources.

Moreover there were no proper vehicles for the SVO's in the State. They were finding it difficult to travel from place to place. The dearness allowance which they were getting were also meagre and often they were not given on time, sources, said.

The state government is already incurring major revenue losses in the absence of regular inspection of stocks by the SVOs. Usually, after the purchase of medicines, many of them remain unused and in the process a good number of them become date expired. If the SVOs inspection takes place regularly then the unused medicines can be sent back to the distributors without much loss. But this has not been happening for several months now, the source added.