Govt. admits discrepancies in NMRA data system

Wednesday, 8 September 2021 00:17 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Says new applications or emergency submissions allowed on manual basis
Govt. hopeful experts will recover missing data
Silence of ICTA has already led to many speculations

By Charumini de Silva

The Government yesterday admitted that there had been discrepancies with regards to the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) data system, which is embroiled in one of the biggest controversies.

“There is a clear mismatch in the data collected in the system for medicines and other related equipment. Although there is an input of data, there was hardly any output. The company had failed to evaluate and submit recommendations based on the data they collected from 2018,” Cabinet Co-Spokesman and Plantation Industries Minister Dr. Ramesh Pathirana said in response to a query posed during the post-Cabinet meeting media briefing yesterday.

He said the company is liable to provide the missing data, adding that a team of experts have already been assigned to recover over 5,000 files of NMRA stored in the Lanka Government Cloud (LGC), which had mysteriously disappeared last month. Applications from around 150 vendors were in the pipeline when the files went missing from the LGC. He clarified that any new submission or emergency applications can be accepted manually by hand to the NMRA.

Previously, the NMRA said the submissions were only accepted electronically due to the countrywide lockdown, and later it said that the e-submissions are from 1 September. But now, amidst the missing data chaos, the regulator has now decided to accept them manually too. The Cabinet Co-Spokesman also said until the missing data is recovered, they will rely and trace on the soft and hard copies issued for medical firms. The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) is also inquiring into the disappearance of these files.

However, the Information Communication Technology Agency (ICTA), which consulted or administered the NMRA digitalisation project, has remained mum on the scandal thus far – which has led to more speculations from various groups including experts in the industry. Opposition MPs alleged that the explanation by the Government was contradictory, particularly in terms of COVID-related data not being entered to the LGC and instead written manually.

They claimed that the very fact of the Government trying to convince the general public, is a major reason to suspect that a mysterious data scam took place.