Massive protest rally by PMRA in protest against management of American based multinational giant pharmaceutical company

Ludhiana, August 23, 2016: A massive protest rally was organised on Tuesday by Punjab Medical Representative Association (PMRA) in protest against the alleged inhumane treatment being meted out by the management of an American based multinational giant pharmaceutical company to its sales promotion employees based at Indore (MP).
Protesters said the pressure, harassment, torture and humiliation allegedly being meted out by the managers of pharmaceutical company forced an MR to commit suicide, the family lost its bread winner. The pharmaceutical company management is infamous and notorious in giving this kind of treatment to its sales promotion employees across the country, they regretted.

Further, they alleged the pressure to achieve unrealistic and inflatory sales target was the basic cause behind the humiliation and mental torture of late MR, which forced him to embarrassed death. In fact it is a murder by sale pressure not suicide. This practice is rampant in the pharma industry knowing fully well that legally a sales promotion employee is not responsible for sales, because most of the factors leading to sale are beyond the control of Medical Representative (MR) like production, manufacturing, quality, pricing, distribution, selection of doctor (customer), promotional policy, area of therapy, chemist, etc. and hence he is not responsible for sales. Still the managements are arm twisting and compelling the medical reps to achieve sales target.

Protesters said this is being the strategy of companies to adopt all wrongful methods of achieving sale including unethical trade and marketing sales policies, to achieve this objective the companies are indulging in Medical corruption and bribing of Medical profession in gross violation of international code of medical ethics and guidelines laid down by Medical Council of India (MCI), with complete impunity.

They said the managements are also breaking all labour legislations applicable of sales promotion employees (\MRs) and use hire and fire policy thereby converting them as slaves (robots). The minimum wages applicable on MRs are being denied to them and they are being forced to work 14 to 16 hours in a day without any overtime payment of wages.

While addressing the protest rally the Secretary of the Union Ashish Molri emphasised that there is widespread anger and unrest among the MRs against this suicidal policies of the management of pharmaceutical companies. He strongly raise one slogan “We demand Zero Tolerance on Sales pressure” in the rally to safeguard the MRs community from such types of incidence. He warned the management to cease these suicidal sales pressure and Medical corruption policies and follow the law otherwise the agitation will be further intensified.

The president of the union Sandeep Sohi expressed that the erring managers, who abated the suicide of late MR should be severely punished and family should be adequately compensated. He also demanded that 8 hours work i.e. from 9 am to 5 pm must be notify by Punjab Govt. to put an end to the exploitation of the MRs by the industry. He also demanded that labour laws must be strictly implemented and managements violating the law must be prosecuted and punished. He demanded that medical corruption and unethical trade and marketing practice of pharma companies must be cross checked and action should be taken as per law by the concerned authorities and departments.

Dinesh goswami, Comrade Jagdish Chand form CITU, Gurinder Chahel also address the rally and said that “MRs are also human beings not Robot” this must be understand by companies, concern ministries of government must check their policies before implementation so that the youth of the country must be saved being exploited and committing suicide due sales pressure. It’s a great loss to the society.

In this rally, Manu, Sanjeev, Ashutosh, Amit Dutta, Harish, Gurcharan, Sushil, Anil, Vishal, Satpal, Attinder, Ranvir, Kanwaljeet, Ravi Prakash, Paras, Jatin, Neeraj Sood, Jatin Kalra, Ravinder, Pankaj, Ashwani Gandhi, Sham Vashith, Paramjeet, Jaspreet, J. P. Singh, S.S. Pahwa, I.P. Sodhi, R K Bhatia, along with others were present.