Officers reluctant to register complaints, violations never reach trial stage
The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) on Friday said endemic corruption in the Food Safety wing had brought the State to the brink of a public health crisis.
The agency, which conducted a surprise inspection of Food Safety offices in the State, said that inspectors accepted bribes and rarely sent food samples collected from outlets for chemical examination. They appeared reluctant to register complaints from the public or record them in registers and give acknowledgement receipts to petitioners. Citizens who sought information on action taken on their appeals were turned away harshly.
Director General, VACB, Anil Kanth had ordered the inspections code-named Operation Jeevan after a family was laid low recently consuming stale food from a popular latenight eatery here.
Investigators said that Food Safety inspectors routinely buried damning food safety analysis reports to save favoured hoteliers in exchange of sizeable backhander payments.
In many cases, food safety officials did little to remove banned food products from supermarket shelves.
The agency said corrupt officials ensured that food safety violation never reached the trial stage. They saved the accused by letting them off with minor fines.
Records fudged
Food safety officials who detected persons responsible for food contamination rarely prosecuted them. They fudged records and accepted bribes to protect the offenders.
In many cases, officials laid down a smokescreen by conducting make-believe inspections at predictable places and timings.
They often saved violators by insulating them from criminal prosecution and restored the food permits secretly days after they annulled them publicly.
In Varkala, the VACB found that inspectors had only sent eight out of the 101 stale food samples seized from various outlets for food safety tests.
The office had taken no action on 23 complaints received from tourists about food sold in the tourist resort area.
In Thiruvananthapuram, the VACB found that the Assistant Commissioner, Food Safety, had taken no action on 78 complaints. The situation was the same in food safety offices in other districts.
An investigator said hoteliers paid food safety inspectors to inform them earlier about food safety raids.
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