Andhra Pradesh Pharmacy Council (APPC)'s plan to launch a website of its own has been delayed due to the human resource crunch at the National Information Centre (NIC) which has been given the responsibility to develop the website. Due to this, the proposed plan of the APPC to start the online registration process for the students and pharmacy professionals will not be in place at least for another three months, it is learnt.

Even after APPC had put a proposal for the launch of a new website six months back, the NIC has not yet responded to build web portal for APPC to take up its activity online. Because of the delay the Council’s proposed online registration and renewal process for the pharmacy students and pharmacy professionals in the state has been delayed by yet another three months.

Earlier, 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. Even after six months of its proposal, the Council has not yet got the website of its own. With this delay, the APPC is now thinking otherwise, and planning to cancel the deal with the NIC and is looking for forwarding the proposal to some other private players who would host a website with much less cost and at the same time providing high security for the website.

It is believed that, there have been many private website providers who are approaching the Council and offering much lower price for building them a secure website. However, the council authorities and the drug control authorities want to give some more time to NIC for it to deliver.

“We had given a proposal to the NIC to build a website for us long back. But so far, the NIC has not given any response to our proposal. They are citing human resource crunch for the delay. We want to give some more time to NIC. If they don’t respond within a month’s time, we have to think about other private players who can provide us with online portal for a much better price than what NIC is demanding,” said K V S N Gupta, registrar APPC.

When NIC is demanding not less than Rs.25 lakhs for the web portal, many private website providers have come forward to build the site for just Rs.10-15 lakhs, informed the registrar.

“Though it is delayed we are giving priority to NIC because of security reasons. I am sure, within the next three months we will be able to launch a website of our own and we will start the online renewal process very soon,” added Gupta.