PESHAWAR, June 7: The Peshawar chapter of Pakistan Chemists and Druggists Association (PCDA) has demanded of the government to constitute a committee to probe into the high prices of drugs in the country.

Talking to Dawn on Friday, the district president of PCDA, Arbab Javed Ahmed, said that drug prices had gone beyond the reach of poor patients and they were unable to buy medicines prescribed by the doctors.

There is a great need to rationalize the prices of drugs, because the multinational pharmaceutical companies were selling their products on 500-1,000 per cent higher prices in Pakistan as compared to India, he alleged.

“We request President Pervez Musharraf to constitute an impartial committee, comprising representatives of the MNCs, local companies and the PCDA, to conduct a thorough probe into the high prices of drugs,” Arbab said, adding that if the committee’s report was taken into consideration, the prices of medicines could be reduced at least by 50 per cent.

He also asked the government to defer the implementation of 15 per cent GST on drugs. He appreciated other measures taken by the government to revive economy and said that a fair and independent drug-pricing mechanism should be adopted to save the patients from being fleeced by the MNCs.

Meanwhile, the Senior Vice-Chairman of the PCDA, Abdul Hadi Khan, has said that the druggists body has some useful suggestions through which the government could collect a handsome amount in revenues from the drug trade without implementing the GST.

The government, he said, had been wrongly advised by the Ministry of Health officials about the imposition of the GST.

Mr Khan said the popularity graph of the government was declining rapidly because the people did not like the decision to impose the GST on drugs.

He said the ever-increasing prices of pharmaceutical products had encouraged the people to use drugs smuggled from India and Iran. If the government failed to check the high prices of drugs, markets would be flooded with smuggled drugs and the government would not be able to collect revenue from this trade.