Within 24 hours: Three spurious drug manufacturers sealed

At least two people arrested, drugs, machinery confiscated in Rawalpindi

RAWALPINDI: As part of a province-wide crackdown on spurious and illegal drug manufacturers, health officials in Rawalpindi have shut down as many as three factories in the past 24 hours and arrested at least two men.

Officials of health department, along with local police units raided factories in different parts of the city on Friday and Saturday recovering manufacturing machines being used and medicines produced.

According to available details, Divisional Drug Controller Naveed Anwar, Area Drug Inspector Jawad Ahsan, Assistant Commissioner Khalid Goraya, and Rawat police raided the Hemazone Factory in the Rawat Industrial Area on Saturday.

The factory, sprawled over an area of about four kanals, was raided at around midnight between Firday night and Saturday morning.

A health official told The Express Tribune on condition of anonymity that when they went to the factory, it was locked from the outside. The official, who did not wish to be named, said that the factory often remained locked from outside during the day when it is supposed to be operating.

During the raid, officials said they had recovered a sachet manufacturing machine, a tablet manufacturing machine, a tablet packing machine, a syrup machine, and drugs worth millions of rupees from the factory.

The official claimed that when the factory was raided it was locked from outside. Moreover, the official said factory often remained locked from outside at day time. The police arrested two men working in the factory and seized hundreds of thousands of tablets.

At least two people were arrested from the factory who told officials that the unit was owned by a Quetta native called Fiaz. The men further said that the medicines manufactured in the factory were usually sold in Peshawar and Quetta.

Earlier on Friday, the health department had raided and sealed two drug related establishments including Al-Jadeed Homeo Laboratory, located on Liaqat Road, and Bioroots Laboratory, located in the Rawat Industrial area on Friday. Owners of these two establishments were booked.

Anwar, the divisional drug controller, explained to The Express Tribune that around 50 drug manufacturing units operate in Rawat. He added that they had raided the two units in the area after receiving tip-offs about illegal activities there.

Responding to a question on the sudden surge in raids on spurious drug manufacturing factories in the city, Anwar explained that the raids took place after the Punjab government issued special orders to crackdown against illegal manufacturing units.

He added that drug inspectors from the Pakistan Drugs Regulatory Authority are primarily responsible to regulate drug manufacturing units and to keep check against illegal manufacturers. However, the drug controller complained that federal inspectors had been inactive for a while.

The drug controller noted that owners of these unauthorised manufacturing units had been booked under the Drugs Act.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 4^th, 2016.