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 that 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.
Badal had asked the officers that as Guru Granth Sahib was the eternal Guru of Sikhs thus such sort of disrespect, just to promote sale of the company’s brands, could neither be accepted nor be tolerated at any cost as it has bruised the psyche of every Sikh.
After the directions of the Chief Minister, the Health department swung into action and took the matter with the top brass of the company following which they have apologized for the matter and decided to recall the product from the market.