COPE Chairman MP Sunil Handunneththi said the Committee aims to assure that the authorities take suitable measures to import high quality drugs. He further said that COPE had issued the recommendations since around Rs.1 billion worth of substandard drugs had been imported during the past five-year period.

MP Handunneththi said that the State Pharmaceutical Corporation which was under review by COPE has no mechanism to conduct quality checks and expiry dates on medicinal drugs that arrive at the Customs, raising serious concerns about the quality assurance aspect of drugs brought in to the country.

Usually when goods are imported to a country there is a mechanism to examine the quality and standards of these goods. But pharmaceutical firms which are aware of this mechanism using their illegal techniques dispatch substandard drugs to the island.

As such MP Handunneththi said that they have proposed that the Government should decide on a mechanism to strengthen the process of importing drugs.