Tracknum: 21824.ggejlhnophhbckkocdllaeiadnaa.kenbo01 Pubdate: Fri, 08 Sep 2000 Source: DAWN (Pakistan) Copyright: 2000 The DAWN Group of Newspapers Contact: +92 (21) 568-3188 Address: Haroon House, Dr. Ziauddin Ahmed Road, Karachi 74200, Pakistan Website: http://dawn.com Author: Mansoor Malik LAHORE: 1,870 CASES PENDING WITH FOUR DRUG COURTS LAHORE: At least 1,870 cases are pending with four drug courts functioning in the province for the last one year. The cases are referred to them by the Provincial Quality Control Board (PQCB) after scrutinizing reports of drug inspectors and the government analyst. The cases generally sent to the drug courts are about the stock of spurious, substandard, adulterated and misbranded drugs, running of medical stores without a proper license, sale of medicines without warranty and in the absence of qualified persons. The stock of expired drugs, government property, physicians' samples, unregistered drugs and improper storage conditions are other offences being prosecuted by the drug courts. During the first nine months of their establishment, the four drug courts functioning in Lahore, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Gujranwala, have tried 1,212 medical store owners and imposed a fine of Rs10.029 million. In most cases the courts had also convicted medical store owners with detention in the court till its rising. The performance data of the fifth drug court in Multan, which deals with cases of Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Bahawalpur divisions, is not available with the Punjab health department. Officials claim that the Multan drug court staff had never informed the health department about its performance despite repeated requests. The court officials say that the court was established by the federal government and they were not under any obligation to inform the health department about its performance. It is learnt that there are 13,500 medical stores in the Punjab of which 70 per cent are situated in urban areas of the province. In Lahore district alone there are 3,500 medical shops. >From October 1999 to April 2000, drug inspectors inspected 18,179 medical stores and of them sealed 1,471. The drug inspectors referred 3,026 cases to the PQCB. During the same period, the PQCB issued 3,240 show cause notices and disposed of 3,945 cases. It sent 2,796 cases to relevant drug courts for prosecution. The Lahore drug court chaired by Mian Abdul Khaliq, during its first nine-month working, has tried and convicted 374 people, disposed of 397 cases and imposed a fine of Rs1.395 million. At least 484 cases are still pending with the court. The Rawalpindi drug court chaired by Altaf Elahi Sheikh has decided around 150 cases and imposed a fine of Rs1.65 million. At least 227 cases are pending with the court. The Faisalabad drug court chaired by Advocate Zaigham Abbas deals with the cases relating to Faisalabad and Sargodha divisions. The court has decided 387 cases and imposed a fine of Rs4.119 million. At least 738 cases are pending with it. The drug court for Gujranwala is chaired by district and session judge Parvaiz Chawla and is operating in Lahore. According to the available data, the court has decided 278 cases in four months (March, May, June and July) and imposed a fine of Rs2.865 million. At least 421 cases are still pending with it. The comparison of cases tried and fines imposed show that the drug court for Gujranwala had shown a strict stance and imposed maximum fines for violating the Drugs Act 1976. A health department official claimed that the offence rate in Gujranwala had sharply declined and a number of medical store owners had even abandoned their business. With regard to the major plenty, an official said the only drug court in Lahore before September 1999, had awarded eight months jail to a person and imposed a fine of Rs35,000. It may be mentioned that the Punjab government had established three new drug courts at Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Lahore (for Gujranwala division) in September 1999. Earlier, there was only one court in Lahore for the whole Punjab which used to function only for one day in a week. This court remained non-functional from July 1995 to March 1997 as the federal government did not appoint its chairman. On the recommendation of the Punjab government, the federal government established one more court in Multan to dispose of increasing number of cases being referred by the PQCB. The Shahbaz Sharif government established three more courts in Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Gujranwala (at Lahore) for early disposal of cases. It is learnt that another drug court was established in Bahawalpur which is still non-functional as the federal government has yet not appointed its chairman. The budget for the court was approved some two years ago. Talking to Dawn, a senior health department official said performance of the operative courts was being hampered seriously as their technical members and ministerial staff had yet not been appointed due to a ban on recruitment. Currently, technical members appointed on temporary basis are working with the courts. They sometimes did not attend courts, which results in lack of quorum. "This situation has hampered the courts' working and the disposal rate of the cases is quite slow," he said. Sources say some drug courts' chairmen are deciding cases even in the absence of technical members and getting their signatures on decisions afterwards. It may be mentioned that the posts of technical members and their budget has already been sanctioned which continues to lapse in the absence of permanent technical members. The official also said that there was no law to control unani, herbal, homoeopathic medicines and food supplements. He claimed that a large number of fake preparations resembling brands of allopathic medicines were freely available in the market under the cover of unani, herbal, homoeopathic medicines and food supplements. He said these drugs could be taken as spurious drugs.