PESHAWAR, Dec 19: Speakers on the concluding day of a two-day seminar described the imposition of the “WTO’s Agreement on TRIPs” as a step aimed at fleecing the resources of the poor countries by the powerful ones.

They asked the government to rein in the MNCs and provide the people with cheap and quality drugs.

“More than 80 per cent of the drug market is captured by the local pharmaceutical companies, which is a tell-tale evidence of how much the doctors and patients trust the locally produced drugs,” said Ghulam Sarwar Khan Mohmand, president Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry, at the seminar entitled “TRIPs’ Impact on Public Health” organised by the Peshawar Press Club here on Thursday.

“Unfortunately, our rulers signed everything blindly at the behest of the US and the European countries, the brunt of which was borne by the poor people,” said Mohmand, adding that the imposition of the TRIPs’ regime would hit the developing countries the hardest as their plants and resources would be controlled by the developed nations.

In May, 1995, eighty countries who were signatories to the WTO’s regulation, opposed patent rights of the living things, arguing that this would lead to a situation where the rich would become richer and the poor poorer.

The research and development (R&D) by the developed nations was geared towards enhancing their earnings and the patent rights of the 97 per cent commodities were set to go into the hands of 10 developed countries, he said, adding that the TRIPS was particularly dangerous for the pharmaceutical industry.

He said the production cost of medicines was much more than the local cost, and, in this way, the developed countries fleeced the poor.

Yasmin Abbasi of the patent office, Karachi, was of the view that the TRIPs was arguably the most heavily politicised area of the WTO, because the framework “establishes minimum standards in the field of patent protection which are derived from legislation in the industrialised countries and all the member states have to comply with these standards, by modifying their national legislation, where necessary.”

She said the TRIPs was to create a harmonised global system under which inventors would be granted exclusive marketing rights for a period of a minimum 20 years.