The Prime Minister yesterday finally signed the Pharmacy of Your Choice agreement with a pharmacy owners’ representative who is under investigation for allegedly importing fake drugs.
GRTU Vice-President Mario Debono and head of the pharmacy owners’ section was in Castile yesterday morning together with the Chamber of Pharmacists President Mary Ann Sant Fournier, to sign the agreement after months of negotiations with government.
Debono has been under police investigation and the subject of a magisterial inquiry since December, after the authorities were alerted to a suspicious consignment of 400 packets imported by his company.
Sources close to the prime minister spoke disapprovingly of Debono’s presence at the negotiations and at yesterday’s event, but added that Lawrence Gonzi would not go into the issue with GRTU.
“GRTU chooses its own representatives,” a spokesman for the prime minister said yesterday. “It’s not up to him to tell them who to send for negotiations and the signing.”
Attacking the MaltaToday journalist for asking the question at the press conference yesterday, GRTU Director-General Vince Farrugia barged in to reply and defend his vice-president in front of journalists when the latter was asked whether he thought it was appropriate to keep representing pharmacy owners while still under police investigation.
“With all respect, Mr Prime Minister, I would like to reply myself to this (question),” Farrugia said. “I think this is a personal attack. There are a lot of people in Malta who for one reason or another are helping the police in some investigation or another.
“We as GRTU, and the majority of the constituted bodies, and the majority of those who believe in civil rights, a person who is asked or a person who in some way or another gives his cooperation to a police investigation is not guilty. First and foremost there has to be a charge, and secondly a person is guilty when there is a judgement. I feel that no Maltese citizen, and we as GRTU believe strongly in this, that no Maltese citizen should be tarnished simply because he is helping the police in an investigation.
“I am sorry at having to speak in this manner at such a happy occasion, a historical moment. I feel that we are ridiculing this occasion. I’m sorry Prime Minister at having to speak like that”.
Gonzi stayed silent and did not comment on this controversy.
Debono – who is also a shareholder in three pharmacies – insisted he had nothing to do with the importation of the drugs confiscated from his warehouse, as his company was only acting as a break bulk operation to re-export the drug out of Europe.
“We’re neither the buyers nor the end users of this product,” Debono said earlier this year. “We’re just innocent bystanders caught up in this case. We have actually been instrumental in stopping this supply, by reporting this case to the authorities.”
Meanwhile the scheme announced yesterday under the Pharmacy of Your Choice (POYC) agreement entitles patients to free medicines. Until now, they had to go to a Government dispensary at St Luke’s Hospital or at one of the Health Centres in Malta and Gozo to collect them; from now on they will be able to collect them from a private pharmacy of their choice.
For the first four months the scheme will be introduced as a pilot project in Mosta to enable the authorities to identify logistical problems and to set the service levels that will be required from the pharmacies that will join the scheme.
A call for applications will then be issued for pharmacies to join the scheme. If in a particular locality there are no pharmacies willing to join the POYC scheme, then the Government will have the right to issue a licence for a new pharmacy in that locality subject to that pharmacy joining that scheme.
Initially, those private pharmacies that will opt to join the scheme will receive medicines pre-packed from the central Government dispensary, but eventually private pharmacies will prepare the medicines for entitled patients themselves.
A joint committee made up of the GRTU, the Chamber of Pharmacists, the UHM and the Government will monitor the implementation of this agreement to verify that the scheme is working as intended.
The agreement will enable private pharmacies, especially those in peripheral areas, to become more financially viable.
For patients, the POYC scheme will mean no more eternal queuing at government pharmacies for those vulnerable groups such as the elderly and the disabled, who are more likely to make use of medicines.
Moreover, patients will be better monitored through their regular contact with their habitual pharmacist, ensuring that they take their medicines as prescribed and nothing else.