Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Health has giv­en phar­ma­cies an ex­ten­sion on their prac­tis­ing cer­tifi­cate af­ter their ap­pli­ca­tions were not filed by the board due to an on­go­ing dis­pute be­tween both au­thor­i­ties.

In a re­lease on Mon­day, the min­istry as­sured the pub­lic that mea­sures have been tak­en to en­sure there is no dis­rup­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ser­vices in ei­ther the pub­lic or pri­vate health sec­tor.

"So as to en­sure that there is con­ti­nu­ity of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ser­vices in both the pub­lic and the pri­vate health sec­tors, the Ho­n­ourable Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, Min­is­ter of Health, has signed the Phar­ma­cy Board (Amend­ment) Reg­u­la­tions, 2023, which al­low for a prac­tis­ing cer­tifi­cate which was valid and sub­sist­ing im­me­di­ate­ly be­fore Jan­u­ary 14, 2023, to re­main in force un­til a cer­tifi­cate for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 15, 2023, to Jan­u­ary 14, 2024, is is­sued, if the hold­er of the cer­tifi­cate has paid the re­quired an­nu­al re­ten­tion fee. These reg­u­la­tions will be pub­lished lat­er to­day (Mon­day)."

The li­cences ex­pired over the week­end and the Phar­ma­cy Board, par­tic­u­lar­ly its pres­i­dent An­drew Ra­haman, has since come un­der heavy crit­i­cism for fail­ing to sub­mit the ap­pli­ca­tions to the min­istry.

How­ev­er, hours be­fore the ex­ten­sion of the li­cences was an­nounced, Ra­haman held a press con­fer­ence where he blamed the de­lay on the Min­istry of Health.

Ra­haman said the Min­istry of Health was not recog­nis­ing its sec­re­tary/reg­is­trar, Suann Joseph-Mout­tet.

"If the min­is­ter doesn't tell me he will ac­cept her sig­na­ture, I can't sub­mit ap­pli­ca­tions for those...li­cences. So why am I do­ing so much hun­dreds of phar­ma­cy li­cences and then I'd have to do it over?" he asked.

He said he needs the min­istry's recog­ni­tion of the sec­re­tary in writ­ing sim­i­lar to how the min­is­ter raised the is­sue.

Ra­haman said the min­istry's is­sues with the sec­re­tary/reg­is­trar first arose in Oc­to­ber when Prin­ci­pal Phar­ma­cist Ane­sa Dood­nath-Si­boo asked her to sub­mit a spec­i­men of her sig­na­ture for ver­i­fi­ca­tion pur­pos­es. He said it took him five weeks to get this sort­ed out.

The oth­er ma­jor prob­lem he said was that the min­istry takes is­sue with her hold­ing the po­si­tion be­cause she is no longer a mem­ber af­ter not of­fer­ing her­self up for re-elec­tion. How­ev­er, he said the Phar­ma­cy Board Act al­lows her to re­main in the role as an of­fi­cer un­til a sub­stan­tive re­place­ment is found.

"(Sec­tion) 10 (3) pre­serves her right to re­main as an of­fi­cer al­though she is not a mem­ber," he said.

Ques­tioned by Guardian Me­dia why she was not re­placed to ap­pease the Min­istry of Health's con­cerns to fa­cil­i­tate the li­cences, Ra­haman said this was al­so a chal­lenge be­cause of the non-co­op­er­a­tion of the Min­istry of Health's two ap­pointees to the board who are re­quired to make the change. He said while it can al­so be done with the Med­ical Board ap­pointees, their ap­point­ments ex­pired and are yet to be filled.

Ra­haman said if the li­cences are to be dis­bursed, the Min­istry of Health needs to recog­nise the sit­ting sec­re­tary/reg­is­trar and they will sub­mit all the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments to get the process start­ed. To get the process com­plet­ed on time, he said the Min­is­ter of Health al­so needs to ap­prove an in­crease in the board's fees to al­low him to ded­i­cate him­self as a full-time pres­i­dent to com­plete all the li­cences quick­ly. If this is not done, he said he will need to split his time as pres­i­dent and prac­tis­ing as an at­tor­ney which would take longer.