ISLAMABAD, Dec 5: Officials of the federal Drug Regulatory Authority (DRA) informed the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly on Wednesday that a recent case involving the death of over 20 people in Lahore allegedly because of a cough syrup consumed by them had been mishandled by the Punjab government.

They said the Punjab drug department panicked under pressure from the media and sealed the factory and created unnecessary distress across the country instead of following the prescribed procedure to investigate the incident.

The Secretary for Regulation and Services, Imtiaz Inayat Elahi, under whose control the DRA falls, said the provincial department was supposed to consult the DRA in such cases.

However, after the incident that took place during the last week of November and made headlines, the Punjab government went ahead all alone, which resulted in a crisis-like situation.

“Drug inspectors of the provincial government probably took some media persons along with them to raid the factory and pharmacies involved in distribution of the syrup initially reported as the cause of the deaths,” Mr Elahi said. The issue had been taken up with the Punjab government, he said.

The factory had been de-sealed, he said, after the central drugs laboratory confirmed that there was nothing wrong with the Tyno syrup.

“We have unconfirmed reports suggesting that the victims were chronic addicts, but a detailed report is awaited.”

The secretary said his ministry was reviewing protocols with the involvement of provincial governments to avoid recurrence of such a situation.

The DRA’s Chief Executive Officer Arshad Farooq said 21 casualties had taken place in Shahdara town of Lahore and all of them were known addicts who, according to initial reports, mixed the syrup with some contraband which caused their deaths.

WEAK MECHANISM: In a candid reply to a question, the committee was informed by Mr Elahi that the country had no lab to check the quality of medicines. The ministry is setting up a laboratory in collaboration with the World Health Organisation.

The local labs could verify ingredients of a medicine, but when it came to determining its effectiveness as compared to other brands, “we don’t have the equipment to perform quality tests,” he said.

“This is the sole reason medicines produced in the country cannot be exported to western countries. We only export medicines to the Middle East and far east.”

The Federal Services Hospital’s Executive Director Shoukat Kayani said substandard medicines were freely available in the market because of weak drug control procedures.

To open a drug store in the country was just like setting up a furniture shop, Mr Kayani said and added that his hospital regularly received complaints about poor quality of medicines in the market.

MNA Yasmin Rehman of the Pakistan People’s Party said every year a plethora of medicines were being registered with no effective monitoring whether the proprietors were producing quality drugs.

On the other hand, western countries took months to register medicines, she said.

The secretary said all these concerns had been addressed in the new drugs control act enacted by parliament and hopefully locally produced medicines would be better placed in the world in future.

EMBEZZLEMENT: The committee was informed that the government had suffered a loss of Rs167 million in the Tawana Pakistan project launched in 2002 to provide milk and biscuits to girl students in the poorest districts.

The social welfare ministry, which has been devolved to the provinces, was responsible for the project.

Officials said all the six accused in the scam, including former social welfare secretary Naeem Khan and project director Ehsanullah Khan, had been found guilty and the Federal Investigation Agency and the National Accountability Bureau were investigating the case.

Laboratory tests had confirmed that the milk and biscuits provided to the students were not fit for human consumption, they said.

The committee asked the bureau to complete the investigation in a month.