THE licensing and registration of food business operators (FBOs), an
exercise which is in progress in other parts of the country for the last
one-and-a-half years, has still not started in New Delhi. The reason
for this is said to be that the department of food is awaiting the
completion of furnishing of the new facilitation centre coming up at
Mayur Bhawan in Connaught Place.
It is pertinent to mention here
that the deadline for licensing and registration expired, a couple of
months ago, but was extended by the Food Safety and Standards Authority
of India (FSSAI) till February 2014. Thus while three months of the
extended deadline have already passed, the furnishing is yet to begin.
Nevertheless, it has been learnt that the department has taken some
steps for the giant task and appointed designated officers for the
purpose of keeping an eye on the progress, once the work starts.
K
J R Burman, food safety commissioner, Delhi,
"The centre at Mayur Bhawan would act as a facilitation centre for the
purpose of licensing and registration for the districts where our
officials would help and guide the applicants in filing of the papers."
He felt that the delay was due to logistical difficulties.
Meanwhile,
the biggest hurdle in the process of licensing and registration was the
manpower, so the office of the Delhi food safety commissioner decided
to make the whole process online. For this as well, the nod by the Food
Safety and Standards authority of India (FSSAI) was still awaited by the
authorities, though the State Bank of India had agreed to help the
department in deposition of fees and so on.
While there were
reports of the beginning of the process, Burman clarified that
full-fledged operations would only start when the facilitation centre
would get furnished with all the necessities. He informed that only
those FBOs who operate within and outside Delhi needed Central
licences. Therefore they applied for the same and their matter was
considered while the FBOs operating in Delhi needed to wait further.
He
suggested that the focus of the department would remain the big players
of food business having turnover of more than Rs 12 lakh, for which the
licensing fee ranges from Rs 2,000 to Rs 7,500, depending upon criteria
like the annual turnover in terms of money and in terms of volume or
import or export of food items.
Burman said, "For those
categories, FBOs need various kind of licences like regional licensing
or Central licensing." At Mayur Bhawan, facilitation would be provided
to FBOs for all 11 districts of New Delhi.
Though it was still
not clear as to how many FBOs would be operating in the national
capital, Burman said that he expected the numbers on the lines of
Mumbai, where some 1.5 lakh licensing and registrations were done so
far.
Burman said that his department had done a lot of homework and hoped that efforts put in by the department would bear fruit.
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