At a time when there are complaints from all quarters that there are immense violations of price-ceiling on all pharmaceutical products by manufacturing companies, the Kerala state drugs control department has decided to set up the price monitoring cell (NPPA-PMC) to regulate the price mechanism as per the directive of the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA).

The department has provided facility for the office of PMC at the premises of the new laboratory building at Kochi, the place where all the offices of marketing companies and CFAs are functioning.

The state drugs controller B. Hariprasad said that for manning the office and detection of DPCO violations, three employees will be appointed on contract basis. For this, NPPA will guide the enforcement agency in Kerala to recruit new staff (price monitoring officers) with educational background in pharmacy. Since the state DC department is struggling for want of regulatory officials, it is unable to depute anybody from the department to function in the NPPA office in the beginning.

According to him, Kerala is the third state in the country to start NPPA-PMC office after Rajasthan and Karnataka. NPPA will soon start this kind of price monitoring cells in all the states for which it has written to all the state drug controllers to check the provision of possible facilities.

With the PMC in force, violations of DPCO by manufacturing companies can be immediately detected and penal actions can be taken accordingly. It has been decided tentatively to start the monitoring cells in seven states in the beginning. However, it will not take much time to operate the functions in other states as many companies are escaping the DPCO by several ways.

In Tamil Nadu, though it has been proposed, the space for an office facility could not be found yet. But, it will happen soon, said S. Abdul Khader, the state drugs control director.

The NPPA-PMC will be operating under the direct supervision of the national price regulator. However, in the states the monitoring officers will report their findings to the state drugs controllers who will inform the concerned officer in the NPPA. The national pricing authority has written to all the state drugs control departments asking for office spaces and other infrastructure facilities to start the monitoring cells.

The state DC department can also train their staff to work as PMOs in the PMCs provided the department has sufficient staff strength to support.