The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Row hits functioning of Paying Counter at MCH

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 14, 2004

Kerala

Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Row hits functioning of Paying Counter at MCH

By C. Maya

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, SEPT. 13. The functioning of the fair price medical shop, the `Paying Counter', at the Medical College Hospital (MCH) has been hit due to a standoff between the officials in charge of the counter and the MCH superintendent, who is also the secretary of the Hospital Development Society (HDS).

The manager of the counter and former ADM, T.S. Vijayakumar, though still holding the post, has not been attending to its affairs for the past three months following differences with the MCH Superintendent.

Three days ago, T.V. Gopi, Chief Scientific Officer, Antigen Manufacturing unit, who had been the officer-in-charge of the Paying Counter, has also requested the Medical College Principal that he may be relieved of the charge at the earliest.

In his letter to the principal, Dr. Gopi has pointed out that he is unable to handle his additional responsibilities of the Paying Counter on his own in the absence of the manager. When contacted, Dr. Gopi admitted to differences of opinion with the MCH superintendent.

The Paying Counter has been selling medicines to poor patients at rates about 20 to 60 per cent lower than the market price, as about 90 per cent of the medicines except certain life-saving drugs are being procured directly from the manufacturers, cutting off the distributors' network.

Distributor system

"We have listed some 150 MNCs from whom we have been directly buying drugs. But of late, there have been attempts to bring back the distributor system, so that commissions can be availed of. There was also pressure from certain quarters to buy drugs from some sub-standard companies. At this stage, none is willing to take charge here," a senior MCH official said.

Pilferage of medicines is still rampant and even fast-moving drugs are now lying date-expired, it is pointed out. The manager, Mr. Vijayakumar, said that he was not willing to continue as his attempts to streamline the functioning of the shop and to bring in transparency and accountability were allegedly being thwarted at every turn.

The MCH superintendent, N. Viswanathan, said that in the absence of officials he had convened a meeting of the paying counter employees on Monday to review its functioning. "Earlier, the monthly collection from the counters used to be Rs.30-40 lakhs. But after the security of the software was improved, the collection last month stood at Rs.1 crore," he added.

Large-scale fraud involving massive pilferage of medicines and date-expired medicines worth Rs.90 lakhs had been discovered in the Paying Counter last year, and the matter is now under investigation by the Vigilance.

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