A Member of Parliament, Mr. Akwasi Akomea Kyeremanteng, is embroiled in a show of power with the Pharmacy Council over the licensing and siting of his pharmacy shop in Kumasi.
The Council, citing blatant disregard for its regulations, closed down KA-K Pharmacy shortly after it was opened by the then ordinary-citizen A.A. Kyeremanteng in 1994. But now as the MP for Afigya Sekyere East for the ruling NPP, he has re-opened KA-K Pharmacy, has successfully obstructed the Pharmacy Council from closing it down and is openly operating it without a licence. He says nobody can stop him.
To add insult to injury, MP Kyeremanteng, who is a pharmacist, has dragged the Pharmacy Council to court in search of a perpetual injunction to restrain the Council from closing down his illegal shop.
Mr. Akomea Kyeremanteng, also the Chairman, Parliamentary Select Committee on Health, took the legal action after his colleague the Minister of Health had refused, after hearing the Pharmacy Council, to act on the MP’s petition to him.
Painstaking investigations by The Heritage revealed that the MP, who once worked as a pharmacist at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) hospital in Kumasi before his election as an MP, opened KA-K Pharmacy shop in 1994.
However, officials of the Pharmacy Council closed down the pharmacy shop on the grounds that the facility had no licence and again the premises where the pharmacy shop was housed had not been licensed for the purpose.
Pharmacy Council’s regulations also stipulate that retail pharmacies should be sited not less than 400 metres apart whilst wholesale pharmacies must be at least 200 metres apart.
MP Kyeremanteng’s shop is, however, sited at Tech Junction about a mere 20 metres from another pharmacy shop, which started operating there as far back as 1980, and as such is in direct conflict with Pharmacy Council regulation on Siting of pharmacies and chemical shops.
On his election to Parliament in 1996, the MP applied for a licence for the shop but was refused and he later turned the shop into a provisions store.
But last December, Kyeremanteng, without recourse to the Pharmacy Council, unilaterally converted the provisions shop into a pharmacy in blatant disregard for the regulations of the Pharmacy Council. His action was reported to the Pharmacy Council, which moved in to correct the illegality by way of closing down the shop, but officials of the Council met Kyeremanteng in the shop, and he reportedly prevented them from effecting the closure.
The officials, after failing to persuade the Afigya Sekyere East MP to allow them to close down the facility had no option than to leave the premises, obviously cowed by the power of incumbency of the government and the ruling party of which the MP is a member.
The Pharmacy Council confirmed the MP’s unbecoming behaviour, with one official showing their exasperation at the behaviour of the law maker turned law breaker.
“I do not see the reason why an MP who is a member of the Pharmaceutical Society should breach the laws of the Pharmacy Council due to his status as an MP”, he deplored.
However, MP Kyeremanteng is unmoved because, according to reports, his action is motivated by petty politics.
He allegedly claims that the owner of the first pharmacy at Tech Junction is an NDC member, and he being an NPP MP “no one can stop me from operating, not even President Kufuor himself.”
Just as the Pharmacy Council was deliberating on the next line of action to take, the MP filed a suit at the Kumasi Circuit Court seeking an order of perpetual injunction to restrain the Council, its agents, representatives or assigns from closing down his shop.
The Heritage investigations revealed that the MP petitioned the Ministry of Health over the issue, who in turn invited the Pharmacy Council but after the Council had stated its case, the Minister refused to intervene.
Checks conducted at the Judicial Service in Kumasi revealed that the suit filed by Kyeremanteng was defective on technical grounds as the right body to have been sued was the Attorney-General and not the Pharmacy Council since the Council is a statutory body established by an Act of Parliament.
Meanwhile, the Attorney-General has filed an appearance on behalf of the Council after the anomaly associated with the initial suit was corrected but a date is yet to be fixed for the hearing of the suit.
