Ensuring an efficient pharmacy service

I would like to reply to the contribution "Consumers' interests are protected through competition and standards" by Benny Borg Bonello of the Consumers' Association.

He writes that the Consumers' Association had not been consulted on the issue of pharmacy licences. This association was never a party to the agreement signed between the government and the GRTU, Association of Retailers and Traders and the Chamber of Pharmacists in 1998. How could it be consulted? How come it suddenly declares itself an interested party?

Did the Consumers' Association ever carry out a survey to see if consumers are satisfied with the service we give? We have done so and there is an extremely high level of satisfaction among consumers regarding the service they receive from pharmacies in Malta.

Statistics also show that the consumer is more than well served. There is a pharmacy for every 1,866 people in Malta and the EU average is one pharmacy per 6,000 people. Places like Denmark, for example, have a pharmacy for every 14,000 people.

We also fail to understand what Mr Borg Bonello means by saying he wishes "to have the sector opened up to competition". It has been explained publicly many times that pharmacies offer a service and cannot compete with one another.

Their profit margins have been frozen since 1979. They cannot offer discounts on anything that is in their pharmacies and they certainly cannot discount medicines.

A pharmacy in difficulty cannot hold a sale of medicines. So what, pray, does Mr Borg Bonello want us to compete on? If this is what Mr Borg Bonello means by wanting a competitive environment, we invite him to ask the government to impose the restrictions we have on all other businesses in Malta, including supermarkets.

We cannot understand how we, as GRTU and the Chamber of Pharmacists, explain this point over and over again and, yet, the Consumers' Association is still having difficulty in understanding it. Having more pharmacies does not mean that the prices in pharmacies will go down. On the contrary, they will shoot up, in order for pharmacies to remain viable.

The Consumers' Association wants to bring about a situation that will ensure that the fittest pharmacies survive, in the same restrictive environment but with more pharmacies. Mr Borg Bonello is doing a disservice to the consumer when he says that we need competition in the issue of pharmacy licences.

We certainly need standards, which a lot of pharmacy owners have invested in over the last three years, both in staff development as well as in the upgrading of premises and services.

However, standards have to be paid for and have to be sustainable. Mr Borg Bonello is encouraging young pharmacists to enter into a market where there will be cutthroat competition if the new regulations as proposed by the government come into force.

There will be a lot of people who will suffer financially as the market is just not big enough for everybody. The Consumers' Association should have, at least, a small modicum of business acumen to see this.

What will happen is that many small pharmacies will close in the villages, leaving everyone without a service in that locality. Do Mr Borg Bonello and his association enjoy pitting retailer against retailer and rubbing their hands at the ensuing mess?

Mr Borg Bonello says that our arguments as GRTU and Chamber do not hold water as there is a considerable amount of people who have shown interest in opening a pharmacy.

We contend that the smell of fish is coming from the Consumers' Association's water not from our arguments. As the GRTU and the Chamber have always stated, we are not and never will oppose the opening of pharmacies in localities where the service does not exist. Indeed, we encourage it.

An analysis of the applications for pharmacy licences that the government (not the Ombudsman, as has been stated in parliament) has in hand, will show very few or no applications for pharmacies in local council areas not having a pharmacy at present. Indeed, one will see many applications that would directly affect the existing pharmacies' viability. These are the facts and Mr Borg Bonello should check them before putting pen to paper.

It is a well known fact that Mr Borg Bonello has access to university resources. We ask him to check again his assumption that "the association is sure that there would be no shortage of trained staff to man these pharmacies".

We ask Mr Borg Bonello to see if there are any unemployed pharmacists registering for work. The latest batch to graduate all found jobs but not one of them wanted to work in a community pharmacy. Not one of them did. It is a perennial problem for pharmacy owners to find pharmacists for employment as there are never enough of them who want to work in community pharmacy.

Again, we invite Mr Borg Bonello to check his facts first and to go and talk to pharmacy owners himself. It is very easy to be an armchair critic. However, verifying facts needs time and effort, something that this association does not have.

Pharmacists wishing to have their own pharmacy may apply for them in places where the service is lacking. No one is denying this right to these people. The consumer is not being denied the choice either. Pitting one pharmacy against another will not give the consumer some kind of added choice. That is not the solution.

Finally, where did the Consumers' Association get its mandate to be consulted on the pharmacy licence issue? We note that the association has never ever had a good word to say about the retailer.

We challenge the association to publish its membership and to tell us whom it represents. The GRTU, on the other hand, is not made up of just pharmacy owners but of over 6,800 members. People listen to it because it has always been constructive in what it says.

Our agenda as GRTU is crystal clear. Certainly, we want to protect our businesses. However, we have always stated that we will abide by the 1998 agreement signed between all the social parties concerned and the permanent secretary in the ministry of health, who, by signing, bound the government of the day to honour it.

We will work towards a geographic and demographic distribution plan to ensure that all localities are served better by having a pharmacy service and that means we will encourage the opening of a pharmacy where there is need for it. That is what we agreed upon.

The 1998 agreement was endorsed by both the Labour and the Nationalist parties at that time. The government is reminded that it does not have a crisis here. Any crisis that arises would be one of its own making. Pharmacy owners are not just angry, they are livid and disillusioned. The draft regulations recently issued by the health division are in direct breach of what was agreed upon, even promised, before the referendum.

We end by saying that no serious consumers' association would comment like this on this issue and then fail to comment on other issues which are far more important to consumers, namely, the recent hike in the VAT rate from 15 per cent to 18 per cent. Or the present high costs incurred by people wishing to buy a car, for example. Or the recent price hike in the costs for importing second-hand cars. That is of direct consumer interest. That is what Mr Borg Bonello should have spoken about. That is where the consumer is really feeling the pinch!

The UK consumer's watchdog was against the liberalisation of pharmacy licences as this would have led to the closure of many small High Street pharmacies in villages in the UK with a consequent massive loss of service to the consumer.

If anything, liberalisation will have an even more detrimental effect in such a micro-economy as Malta's. The same will happen in Malta if pharmacies are rendered unviable as businesses. Is that what the consumer wants or deserves?

Does the consumer deserve a reduction in service to satisfy the whims of those who proclaim themselves defenders of his rights?

Mr De Bono is president, pharmacy owners' section, GRTU.