12-year saga for Burmarrad to get its own pharmacy

A legal saga to grant a pharmacy licence in the hamlet of Burmarrad has taken a new twist after Mr Justice Robert Mangion ordered the Superintendent of Public Health to process an application for a pharmacy there.

In a court sentence the judge decreed that Burmarrad should be considered as a “town or village” under regulations governing pharmacy licences. It also declared that the Superintendent had acted “illegally” and “unreasonably” in blocking an application for a pharmacy along Triq Burmarrad and gave the authorities two months to process the application.

The law regulating the issue of pharmacy licences approved in 2007 states that every town and village should have a pharmacy. But the law was approved before the setting up of administrative councils in 2009 and its definition of what constitutes a town or village refers only to places which either have a local council, or a committee appointed by the local council.

According to the authority responsible for pharmacy licences, such a definition does not apply to those hamlets which since 2009 have been administrated by an elected administrative council, instead of an appointed committee.

The authority used this legal justification to deny an application by the owner of a beauty clinic for a pharmacy in Burmarrad, claiming that the hamlet did not qualify as a town or village, according to the terms of the law.

The applicant was told that he was only eligible to be placed on a waiting list of applicants for a new pharmacy in St Paul’s Bay.

Residents in Burmarrad have long been complaining that they are being deprived of a pharmacy service in their locality, so much so that in 2010 they handed a petition to this effect to the then health minister Dr. Joe Cassar.

The Ombudsman of the time, Chief Justice Emeritus J. Said Pullicino, had investigated a complaint following reluctance by the public health superintendent Dr Ray Busuttil to grant a pharmacy license in this village.

In a complaint to former Ombudsman Joseph Said Pullicino, the latter insisted that the law should now apply to hamlets with an elected council. “It is unfair to claim that these hamlets qualified for a pharmacy when they were run by a committee appointed by the local council and have lost this right when the citizens started electing the committee administrating the locality.”

Despite communications with the Parliamentary Petitions Committee in 2012, no processing of such an application occurred.

Residents are now hopeful that the present superintendent will not approve the decision. They also hope that government gives the Burmarrad community its due consideration when it comes to the provision of public health services.