SIVASAGAR, Aug 2 - The Sivasagar District Drug Dealers� Association has expressed its strong resentment over ONGC�s recent e-tendering process for empanelment of retail chain pharmacies for supply of medicines and medical consumables against a credit note for three years, which it feels smacks of a conspiracy by an anti-Assam lobby to deprive local medicine suppliers in the ONGC operational areas in Sivasagar, Nazira, Geleki and Lakwa.
The association reacted sharply to the �unethical� and �conspiratorial� terms and conditions attached with the tender process such as that the vendor must have at least 20 pharmacies with 30 pharmacists and EMD (Earnest Money Deposit) of Rs 49.7 lakh etc., are clearly to deprive the local medicine suppliers and facilitating big business lobbies outside the State. The Association submitted a memorandum, signed by its president Chandra Sekhar Sarmah and secretary Jyoti Neog, to the Deputy Commissioner Sivasagar seeking his intervention into the matter.
Dilip Borthakur, adviser to the Association told this correspondent on Saturday that over 13 pharmacies in the district which had been supplying medicines to the ONGC since long, will have to close their business and lay off over a hundred of their staff members if such terms and conditions are applied. He said that they had no complaints from any quarter till date and suddenly their means of survival are being stifled conspiratorially by an anti-Assam lobby at Nazira. He further stated that the new conditions demand supplies to be made at 40 per cent subsidised price over medical consumables and 17 per cent on medicines which is also �absurd� and �illogical�. Only a corporate health care institute with a chain of hospitals like Apollo can fulfill such conditions, he added.
The Sivasagar district AASU unit has also strongly protested against the ONGC�s bid to invite outside medicine suppliers while sending the locals to starvation. A memorandum by an AASU team led by Ashim Dutta and Samiran Phukan, president and the secretary of the unit, AASU clearly stated that if the PSU continues to deprive local entrepreneurs and small business community from their right to livelihood with local resources, a strong movement will be launched against it. AASU in the memorandum sent to the top brass of the PSU and the DC, Sivasagar on July 31, demanded an immediate roll back in such policies hatched by a capitalist lobby in Delhi and Dehradun in collusion with a section of anti-Assam senior officers here at Assam Asset.