Pharmacies insist on best service to clients

The pharmacy licences issue is a case where Benny Borg Bonello (February 9) has decided to rashly foray into, armed with lots of passion but very few real facts and allowing so many other issues of far greater consumer importance to pass him by.

It is a fact that the consumer is very well served with the present amount of pharmacies in Malta. The people we serve and their opinion are our testament to this. That is why the Consumers' Association's foray in the issue is unwarranted and unwelcome.

Mr Borg Bonello asserts that the GRTU - Malta Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises does not believe that SMEs are the most important part of the business fabric in Malta. It is precisely because of this belief that GRTU wants a structured system with regard to the opening of pharmacies. We do not want businesses to fail but to thrive. The EU does allow those businesses providing an essential service to the community to be regulated along demographic and geographic lines. In all EU countries, including applicant countries, there is a limit on certain sectors, including pharmacies, in order to ensure their viability and survival.

Mr Borg Bonello is incorrect when he states that there is "a restriction to entry into this sector". We again declare that the GRTU and the Chamber of Pharmacists are not against the opening of pharmacies where there is need, so long as it is according to a previously agreed geographic and demographic plan. The recognised social partners are the GRTU and the Chamber of Pharmacists. The Consumers' Association has every right to speak, so long as what it says is constructive, factual and correct. Its comments so far have not shown any of these sterling qualities.

Mr Borg Bonello asks questions to "test" what consumers want. Yet. these questions are obviously not aimed at the consumer. Mr Borg Bonello wants the young entrepreneur to pit his new retail pharmacy against the existing one. By fostering this particular brand of envy, he is actually doing far more harm than good to the consumers whose interests he holds so dear to his heart.

This argument defies all logic. We can only achieve full liberalisation in this sector if pharmacy owners have a liberalised profit margin and are allowed to discount or raise the price of everything, from medicines to a packet of hairpins. Supermarkets give better deals on many items we sell because they can discount. Pharmacies are not allowed to discount anything and not just medicines. The law does not allow it. More pharmacies will not mean cheaper medicine prices.

With the exception of Mr Borg Bonello, it is common knowledge that the government strictly controls prices of pharmaceuticals in Malta. Any price increases have to be justified at the import entry point by exhaustive documentation. Pharmacies' profits and prices are strictly regulated. It is a downright absurdity on Mr Borg Bonello's part to state that pharmacy owners have a monopolistic situation allowing them to raise prices.

Mr Borg Bonello is also rather fixated on "choice". But what is the "choice" that Mr Borg Bonello wants? Malta has the second highest amount of pharmacies per head in the EU. In the EU and the accessing countries there is, on average, one pharmacy per 6,700 people. In Malta we have one for every 1,800 people when it should be one per 3,000!

We do not talk about "choice" in our dealings with the government but about patients' accessibility to medicines. We encourage the agreed opening of a pharmacy in ill-served localities in order to improve patients' accessibility to medicines as much as possible. Mr Borg Bonello's notion of "choice" is absolutely puerile. We are not there to offer a "choice" of product but a choice of service.

I am happy to announce that we have started discussions with the government on precisely these issues. In the near future, we will be able to serve our patients with their free government entitlement of medicines as well as giving them the personal advice they need. This is a great improvement over the present system. We will never again see the long queues of elderly and infirm people collecting their free medicines at government dispensaries, of which there are nine to serve all Malta and Gozo. Now they will have the luxury of choosing the pharmacy of their choice in their own locality. This will be achieved thanks to the Health Ministry and the GRTU - Chamber of Pharmacists joint committee.

With regard to standards, these are the standards as laid out by the Medicines Act and the EU. Nearly all pharmacies were already surpassing these standards even before they were promulgated. They do not present any restriction to entry of new pharmacies, which will just have to abide by these same standards.

It is a reality that pharmacy students do not see many attractions in community pharmacy. There are never enough pharmacists ready to take up employment as a community pharmacist because today there are many opportunities other than in this sector of pharmacy. Community pharmacy is difficult, sometimes gruelling work and pharmacists give a sterling service.

Mr Borg Bonello mentions the situation in the UK where the amount of pharmacies per capita is one every 6,000 people. The UK Consumers' Association declared itself against the liberalisation of pharmacies as this would "ultimately reduce the accessibility of medicines to patients", especially in the rural areas. So forceful was their argument that the National Health Scheme in the UK is funding commercially struggling pharmacies in rural areas to stay open. This is still not enough. Pharmacies in the UK rural areas are still closing down and it is costing the NHS millions of pounds to deliver medicines to dispensing doctors in these areas. These are facts that Mr Borg Bonello fails to mention.

There is a pharmacy for every 1,800 people in Malta, a microstate. Mr Borg Bonello may wish to know there are more pharmacies in Malta than there are pharmacies in Manchester, a city of over two million people. No new pharmacies have opened in Manchester for the last nine years.

Mr Borg Bonello believes that the Maltese consumer needs to have more pharmacy outlets per capita than in the UK. He wants more pharmacies to open in Malta because "he" has decided that the sector needs more competition. Is he suggesting we break the law and start discounting medicines? Is that what he implies by competition?

I invite him to pull our other collective leg. What Mr Borg Bonello really wants is a plethora of pharmacies, half of which would not see out the year they would open in. This is the sacrifice of bloodletting he is asking of pharmacy owners so that his idea of competition may be appeased.

Mr Borg Bonello then mentions the situation prevalent in the 1980s. In those days I was a student in a private school sixth form when the infamous 20-point system for entry into the university was implemented. I have vivid recollections of the government-sponsored violence and empty rhetoric against Church schools at the time. Where was Mr Borg Bonello when so many students were being denied their basic right of choice of education? Did he speak out at that time?

My generation remembers that consumers' choice at the time was extremely limited by government decree. We could not even buy a decent bar of chocolate. Trading and import licences were issued in the most arbitrary manner at a minister's whim. We had the bulk buying system that ensured that we got the worst goods and foodstuffs on the world market. And we had the infamous Difensuri tax-Xerrejja (shoppers' guardians). These people's aim in life was to indulge their petty envies and whims and to cause harm to even the most moderately successful retailer, all in the name of the weird brand of Socialism that pitted Maltese against Maltese.

I wonder if the Consumers' Association ever wrote or spoke out against the manifest abuses of those unhappy times.

The Consumer's Association is always "trying" to attract members. The GRTU, on the other hand, speaks on behalf of 6,800 odd members. It is both constructive and credible and is considered one of the social partners by both the EU and the government.

The GRTU left it up to consumers' associations in Malta to protest to the government with regard to the recent hike in the VAT rate. Pilate-like, the Consumers' Association washed its hands of this drastic reduction in the consumers' purchasing power. The association would only ask the government to "ensure" that no price hikes will result.

Mr Borg Bonello's message is flawed and biased. His association never has a good word to say about the many retailers who risk all they have in order to set up business, employ people and add value to the economy. Instead, it ritually demonises Maltese businessmen.

Consumers in Malta should give credence to proper, reasonable and informed associations that really represent the interests of many. The Maltese consumer deserves a proper, well-funded and well-managed consumer watchdog on the lines of the one in the UK. We are ill-served by the present set-up.

Pharmacy owners are explaining to their clients that an unregulated and thoughtlessly liberalised pharmacy sector would result in an inferior service than the present one. And the Maltese people, to whom God attributed more than a good dose of common sense, understand this.

The government recognises the fact that it can only regulate with the consensus of the social partners in this field. These are the GRTU - Malta Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises and the Chamber of Pharmacists. Discussions have started and the outcome will be of great benefit to the Maltese consumer wherever he resides in this the smallest state in the EU.

Far from losing the argument, we have the utmost belief that our arguments are the real shield that the consumer has to ensure s/he will get a sterling service from our pharmacies and to improve on an already excellent service that guarantees patients' accessibility to medicines.

Mr Debono is GRTU vice president; and president, pharmacy owners' section.