Rishard Khan

Phar­ma­cy Board Pres­i­dent, An­drew Ra­haman, is plac­ing the blame on the Min­istry of Health for the de­lay in pro­cess­ing li­cens­es for phar­ma­cies.

In a news con­fer­ence this morn­ing, Ra­haman said the Min­istry of Health is not rec­og­niz­ing its Sec­re­tary/Reg­is­trar, Suann Joseph. Ac­cord­ing to Ra­haman, the Min­istry is tak­ing is­sue with her hold­ing the po­si­tion de­spite her no longer be­ing a mem­ber, how­ev­er, he said the Phar­ma­cy Board Act al­lows her to re­main in the role un­til a sub­stan­tive re­place­ment is found.

Ques­tioned by Guardian Me­dia as to why not re­place her to ap­pease the Min­istry of Health's con­cerns to fa­cil­i­tate the li­cens­es, Ra­haman said this was al­so a chal­lenge be­cause of the non-co­op­er­a­tion of the Min­istry of Health's 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 li­cens­es are to be dis­persed, the Min­istry of Health needs to rec­og­nize 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 li­cens­es quick­ly. If this isn't done, he said he will need to split his time as pres­i­dent and prac­tis­ing as an at­tor­ney which would take longer.

While phar­ma­cies are no longer li­censed to op­er­ate as of Sun­day, the Min­istry of Health said it will at­tempt to make le­gal pro­vi­sions for them to op­er­ate with­out the per­mits.