Protesters threaten to launch province-wide agitation. PHOTO: EXPRESS
Industry stakeholders called on the government to withdraw impractical clauses from the ordinance. They said they would be compelled to launch a province-wide agitation otherwise. The protesters raised slogans against the government and the ordinance. They were also carrying placards and banners inscribed with slogans against the ordinance on the occasion.
Khawaja Shahzeb Akram, Ijaz Siddiqui and others officials of the Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PPMA) said the provisions of the ordinance were tyrannical. The officials said the government had conflated sub-standard drugs with spurious medicines. The officials said they would stage a sit-in at Liberty Chowk.
Pharmacy proprietors threatened to indefinitely halt the sale of medicines. They said the government would be responsible for the demise of anyone due to the non-availability of medicines on this account. The proprietors said the government should have taken them into confidence when it had planned to amend the law.
Other speakers said that the government had placed all types of drugs including allopathic, homeopathic, herbal, younani, tibb-i-nabwi medicines in one broad category. They said this was a tyrannical move. The speakers said it would be impossible to manufacture or sell medicines after the ordinance’s introduction. They said it was internationally-accepted norm that spurious drugs were mostly forged and manufactured by unlicensed operators. The speakers said such drugs were devoid of active ingredients needed to cure a particular ailment. They said this was a criminal act that ought to be punished.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 20th, 2015.
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