As part of strengthening the department of drugs control for better
enforcement of drug acts, the government of Tamil Nadu has decided to
fill up vacancies of 98 drug inspectors against a sanctioned strength of
146 posts.
The state public service commission has called for
applications from graduates in pharmacy for written test and interview
and the process will be completed by June this year, it is learnt.
Along
with the recruitment of new drug inspectors, the government will also
fill up 23 vacancies of junior analysts in the state drug testing
laboratory, for that too, the PSC has invited applications. Graduates
with B Pharm or B Sc qualifications can apply for the posts.
The
last time recruitment of drug inspectors in the department was taken
place in January 2010, when 23 vacancies were filled up. It was after a
period of ten years that appointments were held, still vacancies were
existing. At present the Tamil Nadu drugs control department has only 48
drug inspectors for inspection and sample collections in the hospital
pharmacies, retail and wholesale shops and manufacturing companies
covering 32 revenue districts.
Currently, due to shortage of
staff, the workload on the drug inspectors is quite heavy affecting the
work efficiency. As per rules one inspector has to inspect 50 retail
outlets and an equal number of wholesale stores in a month and should
collect seven samples for testing. In most of the months the routine
work cannot be completely fulfilled with the limited staff. Since the
majority of drug inspectors are females and working in villages, they
cannot fulfill the target always.
As far as the drug testing
laboratory is concerned, due to lack of technical staff and analysts the
test reports are always delayed. So the drug inspectors are collecting
samples of long expiry drugs. If short expiry samples are taken and
found in the lab test as ‘not of standard quality’, the department will
not get sufficient time to hold investigation and further action. So,
all the drug inspectors are collecting long expiry samples, sources from
the traders’ community maintained.
To solve all these problems,
the present drug controller has submitted a project, including new
recruitment, to the government which later approved it. The drug
inspectors complain that inadequacy of conveyance facility is becoming a
major challenge to their work.
Source: Pharmabiz
