Nearly four years ago, on another newspaper (14 December 2003), I read how the GRTU and the Chamber of Pharmacists had planned to close all private pharmacies for one day in the first week, two days in the second, and so on. This was simply because following the draft Pharmacy Licensing Regulations that were published in the Government Gazette of 21 November, 2003, they feared they would not be consulted by the government before the final version was published.

With this in mind, I wonder how the GRTU and Chamber members would have reacted had they been wearing the same shoes of Primary Health Care pharmacy employees at their present situation.

In Malta, unions rarely arrive to the desired target with simple dialogue and diplomacy. They often have to threaten to take serious industrial actions. As a matter of fact, practically in every issue, the Chamber of Pharmacists with the help of the GRTU, are achieving their desired goals. Be it freezing of new private pharmacy licences or the proposed Pharmacy-of-Your-Choice scheme.

In the meantime, in the same article, reference was made to the proposed pharmacy scheme. Very interesting was the Health Division’s reply that it could not agree with their report because owners wanted to dispense free medicines from their pharmacies charging the government at least Lm5 per patient. This would incur an expense of over Lm1 million, the Division had concluded. At that time, UHM remained silent, believing that their ambitious dream could never become a reality…

Now, not only did the scenario of money being a problem change, but they will get Lm8 per person, rising gradually to even more later on! And where is UHM?

C. Micallef

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