Cabinet on Tuesday green-lighted almost $940M in contracts for the procurement of pharmaceuticals for the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC), according to Minister of State, Joseph Harmon who yesterday defended government’s decision to remove drugs stored at the New Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation (New GPC) bond.
During a post-Cabinet press briefing held at the Ministry of the Presidency, Harmon told reporters that Cabinet noted the award of several multi-million dollar contracts for procurement of pharmaceuticals.
Topping the list is New GPC with a contract awarded for $490,558,680 followed by International Pharmaceutical Agency with a $326,104,093 contract, ANSA McAl Trading Limited $96,245,200 and Global Healthcare Supplies Incorporated $26,314,990.
Later, in responding to questions, Harmon stated that Minister of Public Health, Volda Lawrence has been very aggressive insofar as actually getting contractors who are awarded contracts to supply those drugs on time and to supply drugs in the right quantity and with the right expiry date.
“You would recall during the course of last week that the minister herself and a team went to the New GPC bond where there is some expired drugs that were being stored and I believe those have been recovered and they have gone through a process of inventorising and those that needed to be destroyed will be so destroyed but the ministry is actually taking some firm measures with respect to the purchasing of pharmaceuticals”, he said.
He informed that the Ministry has laid out a new system for procurement and once this system is adhered to “I believe we should have a better flow of pharmaceuticals going to hospitals and health centres to the benefit of the Guyanese people”.
The new contracts come amid major controversy over recent emergency purchases for the GPHC. A $605M purchase of emergency supplies by ANSA McAl is now being probed by the Public Procurement Commission and the board of the hospital.
Asked about the government’s “sudden” decision to remove all its drugs from the New GPC bond, Harmon said this move has no connection with the controversial Sussex Street bond which is being rented. He said that the New GPC bond was rented. “In fact rent was being paid by the state and the contract actually came to an end but those pharmaceuticals which were still in the bond were actually a holdover from the contract and it was important we felt to ensure that we did not have anything that was stored there so that the company could actually bill us for rent. So that was the reason why the decision was made to move all of those things from there so we don’t have to pay rent for a lot of items which in fact bad been expired”.
Meanwhile, Harmon also announced that cabinet has green-lighted additional contracts totalling almost $132M for the procurement of pharmaceuticals for GPHC.
Global Healthcare Supplies Incorporated was awarded a contract to the tune of $3,799,164, Caribbean Medical Supplies Incorporated $7,806,000, International Pharmaceu-tical Agency $56,061,340, Meditron $12,081,880 and the New GPC $52,072,800.
