THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Manpower shortage is seriously affecting the functioning of food safety department. The number of food safety officers will shrink to 43 from the current 55 with the retirement of 12 officers in May. The department, which is already crippled by manpower shortage, is to face severe crisis in the coming days.
As per norms, each constituency must have a food safety officer. According to sources in the department of food safety, a single food safety officer has to look after more than three constituencies, which is impractical. "We get a call from Aruvikkara while handling an issue in Thiruvananthapuram. In such cases, it would be difficult to reach places on time. Activities such as collection of samples are affected because of the shortage," said a food safety official.
The toll free number of food safety department 1800 425 1125 FREE gets around 40 calls a day. However, the department is not able to respond to even five calls a day. "We don't have the required number of vehicles to reach places for inquiry. The department only has 12 vehicles," the official said.
As many as 156 posts are lying vacant in the department. This was reported to PSC almost a year ago. However, there was no positive response on the issue.
The food safety department was formed in 2008 to implement Food Safety and Standards Act 2006. The prevention of food adulteration wing and analytical laboratories under the control of the director of health services were transferred to the control of the commissioner of food safety then.
Initially, the department was active with frequent inspection of hotels and food business establishments. Now, in addition to manpower shortage, fund crunch too has affected the operations of the department.
"The budget allocation for enforcement activities has been cut short to Rs 2.50 crore in this budget. This is going to affect the functioning of the department," the official said.
No comments:
Post a Comment