Health Ministry still following Keheliya method in medicine procurement: FLSP

Alleges that this government came to power promising reform, but now the question is whether they are repeating the same corrupt scheme under a different label?

By Yohan Perera  

The Front Line Socialist Party (FLSP) yesterday alleged that the current government is continuing the old practice of procuring substandard medicines at higher prices.   
The Education Secretary of the FLSP Pubudu Jayagoda made this allegation during a media briefing while disclosing details about a cabinet paper scheduled to be presented today.   
“The same old game is back with regard to hospital medicine procurement. The medicine tender process was delayed. Orders weren’t placed on time, creating artificial shortages. Then, emergency purchases were made at higher prices, often for substandard drugs,” Jayagoda said.   
He alleged that this government came to power promising reform, but now the question is whether they are repeating the same corrupt scheme under a different label?   
“We have received information about a cabinet paper that Health Minister Nalinda Jayatissa is set to present to the cabinet today. The minister is to report to the cabinet that according to an audit report dated March 29, 2025, Sri Lanka faces a shortage of 313 essential medicines over the next three months (up to June) and 202 of these drugs can be procured through regular means. With regard to the remaining 101 medicines, the Health Minister proposes bypass standard procurement procedures as per Sections 2.3 and 2.4 of the cabinet paper and instead obtain them through government-to-government (G2G) deals” he stated   
Jayagoda argued that this would violate fundamental procurement regulations of transparent competitive bidding processes and the selection of the lowest qualified bidder.   
According to FLSP Education Secretary, the Minister proposes to appoint a seven member committee to formulate the new procurement methodology and to delegate selection of supplier countries for medicine procurement to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.   
According to Section 8.1 of procurement guidelines, direct procurement without calling for tenders is permitted only under four specific circumstances. That is, when the medicine is produced by only one manufacturer, during emergency situations such as pandemics, when there is a severe shortage of the medicine and when the medicine is produced by the State Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Corporation, he explained.  
He added that the justification being used now is the ‘medicine shortage’ clause. How did this shortage occur in the first place? Under the Ranil Wickremesinghe government in August 2024, the then-Health Minister Ramesh Pathirana attempted to replace existing medicine suppliers with a favoured group of vendors. When there was a huge objection to it, the ministry stopped issuing orders to both the existing suppliers and the proposed new suppliers, Jayagoda recalled.