Graft situation in Drug Administration

None is likely to be surprised by what has been made public by the Bangladesh chapter of the Transparency International (TI) about the Drug Administration (DA) Thursday last quoting the results of its recent survey. The people who seek services from this important state entity that is mandated to carry out activities involved in matters about public health safety are already aware of revelations made by the TIB. But many others might find the findings of the TI survey quite revealing for every service the DA delivers costs the receiver of some extra payments, ranging between Tk. 5000 and Tk. 1.5 million.   

The office of the Director General of Drug Administration (DGDA) offers lots of services, starting from registration of pharmaceutical projects/companies down to sample testing and quality control. When corruption is all-pervasive in such an organisation, one has justified reasons to suspect the quality of drugs that have been tested and certified by it. The large and leading pharmaceutical companies may be exceptions, but the small ones won't mind paying a few extra bucks to get their substandard drugs and medicines cleared by the DA. Moreover, involvement of representatives of pharmaceutical companies in different committees of the organisation has reportedly helped the formation of an evil nexus in an organisation that is supposed to be a very disciplined and transparent one.

The DGDA has always been handicapped by acute shortage of manpower and logistics. The entity which is required to carry out different types of regulatory jobs, in addition to normal work, faces serious difficulties because of inadequate manpower and logistics.  With a small number of officials and employees, the directorate finds it really difficult to carry out its work on time and to address the issues that crop up from time to time. Furthermore, the unscrupulous section of its officials tends to make use of this inadequacy in their favour to squeeze out extra bucks from the seekers of various services.

What is more worrying is that all the findings made public about graft situation in the public institutions such as the DA by the media or the anti-graft bodies have very little bearing on the situation on the ground. The public discussion on the graft issues raises a sort of discomfort among the officials and employees of the organisations concerned, for a day or two. But the discomfort goes away soon and the under-table-payments continue as usual. This could equally be true in the case of DA. However, it is a pity that safety and security of public health are being compromised at every step in the DA to facilitate earnings of undue income by a dishonest section of officials.

There is no denying that no entity can be graft-ridden unless the officials manning the key positions are indulgent to the graft-takers. However, such indulgence is, allegedly, extended only when their own shares in the graft money is ensured. But such a situation, under no circumstances, should be allowed to continue in the DA. The ministry of health should take note of the weaknesses identified by the TIB study in the operations of the DA and initiate remedial measures. At the same time, it must do something immediately to rein in irregularities, financial or otherwise, in this organisation.