Pharmacy and Medicines Regulatory Authority (PMRA) has urged the country’s courts to mete out stiff penalties to living theft convicts as stipulated in the PMRA Act of 2019.
PMRA director-general Mphatso Kawaye made the call on Thursday in Mzuzu during a sensitisation workshop with Association of Magistrates (AMA) and police prosecutors.
He said apart from getting guidance on how to carry out investigations, the main highlight of the engagement was to emphasise the public health impact of cases of medicines theft and illegal handling of medicines.
Kawaye said understanding the public health impact would help the magistrates give proper sentences associated with various cases.
“The key trigger for revision of the 1988 law that was in place was to get the 2019 Act that we have now since penalties were quite lenient.
“The penalties were reviewed but experience shows that in practice, we are not getting punishment that is consistent with the law. We hope their understanding of the public health implications will help them mete out stiffer penalties,” he said.
Kawaye revealed that PMRA has 28 cases in the courts which he said prompted them to embark on the sensitisation drive to yield better outcomes from the courts.
“We have cases where people are charged a fine and not a custodial sentence when the law says the sentence for such a case is 10 years imprisonment,” he said.
During her speech, Judiciary Training Committee chairperson Violet Chipao, a judge of the High Court of Malawi, said that if sentences are not deterrent enough, the law loses its value as individuals do a cost benefit analysis of crime before deciding to engage in the criminal activity.
She said penalties imposed by the courts must reflect the seriousness of the offence and must be effective.
Said Chipao: “Principles of sentencing require that the courts pass meaningful sentences that do not make a mockery of the criminal justice system, but do actually punish the offender after considering all circumstances of the offence and the offender.”
Section 82 (1) of the PMRA Act says a person who steals medicines or allied substances from a public health facility commits an offence and shall, upon conviction, be liable to a fine of K20 million and to imprisonment for 20 years.
Subsection 2 says in spite of the penalty imposed under subsection 1, the court may order that the medicines or allied substance be restored to the public health facility concerned upon certification by the authority and that any gain made by the offender be paid to the facility.
“The penalty under Subsection [1] shall also apply to any health worker… who manages medicines and allied substances in a public health facility and has been found not to keep proper records… to have stolen the medicines and to have issued a false prescription in order to have medicines dispensed,” reads in part the Act.
