MULTAN, Jan 2: A senior health department official appointed to probe the matter of expiry of raw material worth Rs 8 million at the official pharmaceutical factory in Lahore has refused to complete the task.

Sources in the health department told Dawn that the official had conveyed his seniors that he had come under ‘tremendous pressure’ from various corners since taking up the assignment of holding the inquiry against a loss of Rs 8 million to the public exchequer.

The sources, however, said the official had confirmed in his preliminary investigation that the government pharmaceutical factory had suffered the loss due to a row between a former general manager and pharmacist of the provincial medical stores depot (MSD) over the ‘division’ of commission given by the firm which supplied the raw material meant to produce various tablets and pills to provide them to the state-run health facilities at subsidized rates.

The factory was set up by the health department at the provincial drug testing laboratory with an aim to save millions of rupees by manufacturing necessary tablets and pills on their own. But it could work for a brief period and has been lying idle since 1992.

Sources disclosed that the provincial health department was considering an option these days to hand over the factory to the federal government. “But now it is nothing more than scrap,” told a source, adding that it was installed with a cost of several million rupees.

Former MNA Akbar Ali Bhatti, convicted recently by an accountability court in a case of misuse of leased land, was also involved in the supply of substandard and unfit medicines for human consumption to the government. Some MSD officials were also named in the fraud.

The case was investigated but the accused were never tried.

HEALTH: The district government has proposed a multi-dimensional plan to elevate health-service-coverage from paltry 39 per cent to cent per cent by the year 2004 to rural population that is expected to increase up to 2.06 million from existing 1.95 million, reports APP.