LAHORE, Dec 29: Fifteen to 20 per cent essential medicines available at the drug market in Punjab are being smuggled from India and other countries.

Taskforce on Spurious Drugs Chairman Dr Saeed Elahi told Dawn on Monday that to check the trend, a meeting with the Federal Investigation Agency and Customs officials was being convened shortly.

He said a comprehensive plan had been evolved to purge the province of spurious drugs. On complaints about some drug inspectors’ corruption, he said they were being replaced with pharmacists of public hospitals to ensure transparent operation.

Dr Elahi said drug inspectors had enormous powers, but had a meagre salary. The government would look into this and curtail their powers and increase their salary, he said.

He expressed his surprise over the registration of 42,000 registered drugs in the country, while the India has only 5,000.

He said the provincial government was trying to know the reason behind and it would submit its recommendations regarding future registration of drugs and scrutiny of the existing ones.

Dr Ealhi said a crackdown on spurious drugs’ dealers would be different from the ones initiated in the past as his team would not harass pharmacists, but would not spare big guns in the illegal business.