The Pharmacy Graduates Welfare Association (PGWA), an organization of graduate pharmacists working under the Delhi government, is now chalking out an organizational expansion program to carry out across the country in the wake of multiple issues arising in various states with respect to the pharmacy profession and their welfare projects, it is learned. 

Pharmacists in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Tripura, and many other states face serious problems in their profession and with regard to their registration and renewals of certificates with respective pharmacy councils. No political party or pharmacist association at the national level or state level is bothered about their problems, and the issues remain unresolved forever. PGWA wants to take up the issues and find solutions with the respective governments through its branches, a top office-bearer informed. 

As part of the expansion plan, the association will have its branches in nearby states of the national capital territory (NCT) of Delhi very soon. Graduate pharmacists from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan have already approached PGWA Delhi office-bearers to form units of the association in their states. Discussion is going on with pharmacy professionals in other states, especially in the south and the eastern part of the country. PGWA has decided to expand the association throughout India because of increasing pressures from the new generation of pharmacy graduates who are reluctant to associate with the Indian Pharmacy Graduates Association (IPGA) which was established three decades ago. 

According to Ramesh Kumar, secretary of PGWA, the existing pan India pharmacy graduates body, IPGA, is not working for the welfare of the graduates, or it is not concerned with their issues. “IPGA was established 30 years ago, but so far they have not taken up any issue of the working pharmacists, either of graduate pharmacists or of diploma pharmacists. Our association is working for the welfare of all pharmacy professionals, and we want to expand our activity throughout the country,” he said. Mahesh Kumar Vats, a pharmacist working in GTB Hospital in Delhi, has taken over charge as the president of the association following the resignation of Deepak Trehan. It is said that Trehan resigned from the post of the president because of his utter failure in the Delhi Pharmacy Council election. PGWA has 300 members in Delhi.