Punjab Government on Friday said that German MNC Bayer Pharma has apologised for the ‘inadvertent error’ of the visual aid which has Sikh religious scripture printed on one of the pages and decided to recall all the copies of the product.
A statement from the Chief Minister’s office said that this was in strict compliance of the directions of Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal.
The statement said that in a letter to the State Government, the marketing head of the company had informed that this has been an unintentional error as it was not intended to hurt any religious sentiments. The official of company said that the company respects the cultures and religious sentiments of the countries in which they operate in adding that with due respect to the issue, they have informed their sales team not to use this material and have already asked for a recall of all the copies from the market. The marketing head assured that they would treat the recalled copies with utmost respect and would not discard them as waste. Apologising for this entire incident, the official said they would take care about it in future.
Taking cognisance of the disrespect of Gurbani by Bayer Pharma, which had hurt the sentiments of Sikhs by designing the visual aid through displaying its product ‘Polarmine’ in the background of Path Japji Sahib and Sri Guru Granth Sahib ji Ang (Pages), the Chief Minister had asked the officers of the Health department to immediately take up this issue with the company.