A member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Council (Mr Sultan Dajani) has challenged the state of probity and integrity prevailing at the Society.
A press release issued by Mr Dajani on July 16 asserts that that the manner in which members' questions were handled at this year's annual general meeting of the Society (PJ, May 20, p757) and responses to subsequent letters written to the Society's President (Mrs Christine Glover) by Mr Dajani constitute "a campaign to hide the truth". In particular, Mr Dajani is concerned about the handling of pay rises for the Society's directors and Secretary and Registrar.
He says that the response given by the Society's resources director (Mr Denis Argent) when staff pay was raised at the AGM failed to convince some of the members present, who then asked Mr Dajani to investigate the matter from his position on the Council.
Mr Dajani says that he had tried to raise similar points when the Council considered the Society's finances prior to publishing the annual report for 1999. He had been told that he could not question the accounts on the ground that they had already been accepted by the Society's honorary auditors.
Mr Dajani says: "The campaign to hide the truth, whatever that may be, has shown me more and more that those concerns expressed at the AGM may have been justified after all. This is not the first time that the system managed by the few has excluded from members of the Council the relevant facts when we are supposed to know everything in leading the profession."
Referring to a corporate governance structure which should ensure more transparency, more accountability and more probity, Mr Dajani says: "All we have done in the restructuring exercise is to legitimise what was being done previously."
Mr Dajani's press release was accompanied by two letters he had written to Mrs Glover. They suggested that Council members were refused information by senior Society staff when it suited them and that the Society had only a selective corporate governance culture and one that was not totally open with the membership or the Council.
A statement issued by the Society on July 18 said: "The Society adopted the HAY evaluation system for determining the pay structure of its managerial staff in 1985 and, subsequently, this has been applied to the overwhelming majority of other grades of established staff. The system provides for re-evaluation of job values: as with any such system, it is the post, not the postholder, that is evaluated.
"Following the restructuring of the Society's staff into directorates, directors' job values were re-evaluated by an external assessor. Currently, a fundamental review of the arrangements for determining policy on remuneration packages for senior staff is being undertaken by a group led by the Vice-President. This group is considering a number of aspects of the Society's corporate governance, including internal audit. Recommendations will be considered by the Council shortly.
"Under current policy, staff salary bands are published in the Society's annual accounts."