The Andhra Pradesh Pharmacy Council (APPC), which is marred by internal politics and bureaucratic hurdles, sees no hope for a new website of its own in the near future.

As there are huge number of newly graduated pharmacy students and pharmacists coming to the council office for registrations and renewals, the little staff at the council's office is facing the heat from the candidates. In order to streamline the renewal process and to speed up the registration, the council had aimed to have a web portal of its own. But with continued legal battle between the officials and APPC president, the state government had put the plan of the website at the backburner.

At present, APPC has no official caretaker and is being run by senior clerks at the office. After the Andhra Pradesh high court nullified the candidature of  Annapa Reddy as APPC president, the council’s works were executed by in charge registrar K V S N Gupta appointed by APDCA for some time. But he too has resigned and has been keeping away from the council’s office due to internal political conflicts.

“It is important the state government and the health department take immediate steps to restore proper functioning of the APPC. Because of the inordinate delay in launching a website for APPC is costing the students and pharmacists hugely. Many are losing opportunities due to delay in registrations as they are forced to wait for almost six months to one year for their turn for registration,” said the former in-charge registrar Gupta.

The government too is acting indifferent towards the APPC. Though it has granted funds for launching a website for Andhra Pradesh drug control department, it has not done the same for the APPC though the proposal for the same was given much before the APDCA’s project.

Earlier in June 2012 the APPC had requested NIC to build an exclusive website portal of the APPC and had even agreed to pay Rs.25 lakhs for hosting the portal, but even after one year no action in this direction has been taken by the government.

Currently, the token system followed by the council office is proving inefficient and candidates are feeling the heat as they are just asked to wait for long periods for getting themselves registered as pharmacists. Every day, the officials are clearing only 40 applications. As there are only four to five clerks they complain of fatigue and demanded the government to increase the human resource capacity at the office or else at least launch a portal so that it will ease the pressure and it would also be helpful for the candidates to get registered and renewed easily using the online portal.