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TOBA TEK SINGH, March 27: Diabetes and angina patients are at high risk these days as they have failed to find all important medicines since imposition of 15 per cent general sales tax on medicines.
Some patients told this correspondent that diabetes patients using insulin were worried as drug shops had no supply of it for the last six days.
When contacted, shop owners said the most common medicine for diabetes, Insulin 70/30, was available at Rs406 per pack before the levy of GST. Now its manufactures have stopped its supply. Patients and their relatives were forced to travel to Lahore to purchase the medicines from the wholesale market where it was available at Rs470 to Rs480 per pack, they added.
Similarly, the drug for angina, Dijomin, which was being sold at Rs7 per 25 tablets pack (of Glaxo-Wellcome) was now not available with its distributor. Other medicines for angina, Angised (of Glaxo-Wellcome) and Isordil (of Wyeth) were also not available with the distributors, they claimed.
They said the drug for thyroid patients, Thyromin, was also not available here. They claimed that though the price of the drug was Rs8 per 100 tables, patients had to buy it from Lahore wholesale market at Rs50 per 100 tablet pack.
OKARA: A cross-section of society on Wednesday condemned imposition of 15 per cent General Sales Tax on drugs.
Reports said Consumers Society’s Rao Nauman Yaseen, local District Bar Association (DBA) Senior Vice-President Advocate Mian Muhammad Tahir Mahmood, Rural Welfare Committee Advocate Chaudhry Ahmad Ali and others slammed levying tax on medicines.
They claimed rates of medicines and drugs had already been on higher side in the country than in any part of the world. The government’s ignorance to the reality would trouble the poor patients, they added.
They urged the government to take back its decision in favour of the poor patients.
SHEIKHUPURA: The Patients Welfare Society condemned the levy of general sale tax (GST) on medicines, including life saving drugs.
Society chairman Badaruz Zaman Virk said in a statement that the GST would hit the poor people.
Mr Zaman said life saving drugs were exempted from taxes all over the world.
He expressed the fear that smuggling of drugs from India and Iran would increase as drugs there were cheap. It would deprive the government of revenue, he added. He ridiculed the government claims to provide relief to common man and said the tax was imposed on the instructions of world monetary institutions.
He demanded that the government should withdraw the GST on drugs immediately.
