The Phar­ma­cy Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PBTT) is in the red.

The Busi­ness Guardian was in­formed that the board, which was one of the found­ing mem­bers of the T&T Group of Pro­fes­sion­al As­so­ci­a­tions Lim­it­ed, is cur­rent­ly in se­ri­ous debt to that or­gan­i­sa­tion for use of of­fice space.

As a re­sult of the sit­u­a­tion, the TTG­PA is once again con­sid­er­ing ter­mi­na­tion of the mem­ber­ship of the Phar­ma­cy Board as it had done in Ju­ly 2018 when the Phar­ma­cy board was is­sued a le­gal let­ter for ar­rears amount­ing to $151,138.45.

How­ev­er, the ter­mi­na­tion of mem­ber­ship was re­versed af­ter mem­bers of the PBTT re­quest­ed an emer­gency meet­ing ask­ing to be re­in­stat­ed, and made as­sur­ances that it would set­tle its debt to the TTG­PA.

Five years on, the is­sue of debt has lin­gered.

The Busi­ness Guardian was in­formed that for the pe­ri­od No­vem­ber 2021 to Oc­to­ber 2022 the PBTT had run up a debt of $236,250 with the TTG­PA al­so ques­tion­ing the fi­nan­cial op­er­a­tions, staffing and ad­min­is­tra­tive struc­ture of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The TTG­PA con­firmed to the Guardian, that in De­cem­ber, the PBTT's Pres­i­dent An­drew Ra­haman made a pay­ment cov­er­ing the board's pay­ments up to June 2022.

Ra­haman, who has been pres­i­dent of the PBTT since 2006, did not de­ny that the board was in debt.

He ex­plained that based on the lim­it­ed in­come com­ing in­to the Phar­ma­cy Board, the PBTT was in a per­pet­u­al strug­gle to cov­er its ex­pens­es.

In his view, the cur­rent fee paid to the board is far too low.

"A phar­ma­cist pays the phar­ma­cy board $150 to be a phar­ma­cist," said Ra­haman, in a phone con­ver­sa­tion with the Busi­ness Guardian.

"This is $150 a year for the last 20-some­thing years; $150 di­vid­ed by 12 (months). Phar­ma­cists pay the phar­ma­cy board $12.50 a month to be a phar­ma­cist. That's the cost of a snow-cone with slight milk," said Ra­haman.

"One with a lit­tle more milk is $15 is more mon­ey than the price a phar­ma­cist pays to be a phar­ma­cist per month, which is em­bar­rass­ing. I could get $12.50 in less than five min­utes stand­ing up as a va­grant in front of KFC."

Ra­haman es­ti­mat­ed that less than a thou­sand phar­ma­cists pay that fee an­nu­al­ly.

Apart from this, Ra­haman said the on­ly oth­er in­come the Board re­ceives from its mem­ber­ship is the li­cense fee paid to al­low a phar­ma­cy to op­er­ate.

That fee stood at $850, Ra­haman said.

"This $850 for the year di­vid­ed by 12 is $70.83. So that is what a phar­ma­cy pays us, and that is the oth­er in­come that the phar­ma­cy board re­ceives the oth­er sub­stan­tial in­come. The on­ly two sub­stan­tial in­come are those two, which is the cost of a box of Panadol Ul­tra, one box not the 50s," said Ra­haman.

"A phar­ma­cy, some of whom make a mil­lion dol­lars a month, pays us, pays the phar­ma­cy board as its on­ly source of in­come, sub­stan­tial source, the costs of a Panadol a box of pan­el Ul­tra mul­ti-symp­tom plus three sin­gle packs with two in it."

He said just over 400 phar­ma­cies paid that $850 fee an­nu­al­ly.

Based on the num­bers giv­en by Ra­haman, the Phar­ma­cy Board would re­ceive around $500,000 an­nu­al­ly from its mem­ber­ship through its fees.

The month­ly fee the PBTT is oblig­ed to pay to the TTG­PA stands at $16,875 VAT In­clu­sive, which amounts to over $202,500 per year.

Ra­haman said he has been lob­by­ing to have the fees raised, but the ap­proval for such a change can on­ly come from the Min­istry of Health. But he is frus­trat­ed that so far de­spite his lob­by­ing, no such change ap­pears on the hori­zon.

" I don't think I have to jus­ti­fy why the cost of a snow cone with slight milk is in­suf­fi­cient for the Phar­ma­cy Board to meet its ex­pens­es," said Ra­haman who ex­plained that the Board still had to cov­er ex­pens­es such as salaries and of­fice equip­ment with the re­main­ing funds.

"We at the Phar­ma­cy Board, they are press­ing down on us and we have to pay for of­fice space present­ly, at a cost of $16,875 per month. Are you kind of putting to­geth­er why we are in ar­rears?" Ra­haman said, "The costs is more than the in­come. Do we have pa­per to buy? Ink? I have to do 6,000 doc­u­ments for phar­ma­cies every year."

Ra­haman said the work­load was part of the rea­son why he ini­tial­ly vol­un­teered to take on the role of Phar­ma­cy Board Pres­i­dent as a full-time job. He added that he al­so did so, ex­pect­ing that Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh's his­to­ry in the pro­fes­sion would have made him more ami­able to the con­cerns of the pro­fes­sion. How­ev­er the de­mands, he ex­plained, be­came too much.

"The mon­ey start­ed be­ing tak­en par­tial­ly out of ne­ces­si­ty, from the rent of the Phar­ma­cy Board. Be­cause for phar­ma­cists to get their li­cens­es, as you we reach the 10th (of Jan­u­ary) they com­plain­ing that they haven't got­ten it yet," he said, adding that the lim­it­ed fund­ing forced him to re­turn to his pre­vi­ous job.

The Board has al­so been chal­lenged by sev­er­al bu­reau­crat­ic chal­lenges, which has trans­lat­ed to de­lays con­cern­ing the li­cense ap­pli­ca­tions.

Ra­haman ex­plained that he at­tempt­ed to start the process to re­new li­cens­es as far back as Oc­to­ber, but the sig­na­ture of his sec­re­tary was ques­tioned by Health Min­istry of­fi­cials, first­ly fol­low­ing the use of a mod­i­fied sig­na­ture fol­low­ing her mar­riage and once again fol­low­ing con­cern that she no longer held the role and there­fore the sig­na­ture was void.

Ra­haman said these is­sues have since been ad­dressed but the de­lay over the is­suance of li­cens­es has raised an­oth­er con­cern around the mem­ber­ship, as Ra­haman has tried to take mat­ters in­to his hands con­cern­ing the re­port­ed short­fall in in­come.

"I came up with what I think was in­no­v­a­tive, which is be­cause we have been un­suc­cess­ful for 20 some­thing years to get it in­creased the cor­rect way by the Min­is­ter do­ing it. Who­ev­er they were, all of them in the past be­cause we have been un­suc­cess­ful, it is a de­f­i­n­i­tion of mad­ness to keep try­ing," said Ra­haman con­cern­ing the arrange­ment he posed to his mem­ber­ship, "How­ev­er I have a pro­pos­al for my mem­ber­ship. If you wish you can pay $50 a month for the year that's phar­ma­cists. The $600 a year. Again $50 is the price of one box of Panadol Ul­tra with two tablets and I have asked phar­ma­cies to pay $50 more per month for the year, to give $600 for the year. And they are say­ing that I am in­creas­ing the fees il­le­gal­ly."

Some mem­bers have ques­tioned this, and like the TTG­PA have raised con­cerns about his use of funds. How­ev­er, Ra­haman is adamant that he is not op­er­at­ing il­le­gal­ly and his sug­ges­tion is on­ly for those seek­ing to ex­pe­dite the process.

Con­tact­ed by the Busi­ness Guardian on the is­sue Deyals­ingh stat­ed that the mater of phar­ma­cy li­cens­es is sole­ly for Ra­haman to ad­dress.