Harin in P’ment exposes “corruption virus” behind deletion of NMRA records

Main Opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) firebrand MP Harin Fernando yesterday in Parliament shone a light on the deletion of records belonging to the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA), something he said was a serious loss of information and data and a breach of responsibilities. 

Fernando, who was the Minister of IT and began drafting the Data Protection Law under the previous regime, said the Rajapaksa Government has to take responsibility for what he labelled as sheer negligence and “destroying the confidence of the global pharmaceutical industry with the NMRA fiasco”. 

On Tuesday, State Minister Prof. Channa Jayasumana told Parliament that 5,925 records in the eNMRA portal had been deleted and, of that, 3,117 or 53% were records relating to normal pharmacy registrations etc. He also said records pertaining to patented information or those related to procurement of COVID-related medical products and devices weren’t lost. 

However yesterday Fernando read out the list of files lost using the Annexures given by the State Minister in his answer to an Opposition query on Tuesday.

Fernando said that among records deleted were foreign manufacturing sites’ approval for medicines (143 files), medical devices (909 files), and sample import licences for medicines (462 files). 

The SJB MP also said that, as per the NMRA notice on 26 October 2020, for an emergency supply of rapid antigen test kits it was required that applications be submitted through the eNMRA on a priority basis.

As per the Police, the lost records include drug formulas as well as comprehensive and confidential information. Police also said that system records of those who accessed it have also been deleted.

Fernando also said the eNMRA data was deleted on 9 July whereas it was notified to the CID only on 23 July or after two weeks. He said that among the records lost were documents submitted for urgent COVID care-related products tenders worth Rs. 10 billion.

He also said that Epic Lanka was a reputed and leading IT solutions provider for both State and private sector organisations. Hence, the eNMRA system is such that files cannot be deleted in one go but one which asks for repeated confirmation before deletion. 

Fernando also rebuked State Minister Jayasumana's remarks on Tuesday to the effect that the eNMRA system “wasn’t good” and that the country should revert to the old manual system. Fernando said that when the world was rapidly progressing towards digital solutions, Jayasumana was rushing backwards by calling for manual systems. Fernando pondered if that way it could perhaps be tampered with to increase corruption.

Recalling that President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his “Viyathmaga intellectuals” promised to use Oracle database tools and artificial intelligence to solve people’s problems, Fernando quipped that today “no tools but people have been fooled.”