The Gujarat Food and Drugs Control Administration (FDCA) plans to give about 270 devices with GPRS connectivity and the Food Safety Management System (FSMS) software to all its food safety officers (FSO) in order to bring out the efficiency in the work of FSO and also to keep the track of the database.
State food safety commissioner Dr H G Koshia said, “In order to improve the efficiency and speed up our work, we are set to launch a system wherein dedicated softwares would be utilised and the latest gadgets would be provided to the field officers.”
“And to accomplish or goals the dedicated software for our upcoming project, FSMS is in place. This software would be installed in devices like mobile phones, tablets, phablets or a dedicated hand-held devices, and it would remain connected with our central server,” he added.
Koshia stated, “This way we would be keeping a track of our staff, like FSO, and also build a centralised database of all the food samples collected in the state, and increase the conviction ratio of people involved in selling or making adulterated food items.”
“Earlier, the FSO, in order to ensure that the food business operators (FBO) do not sell or manufacture adulterated food, used to collect food samples and then send it to the government laboratories for testing, and if the lab gave negative remarks, the FBO faced legal action from FDCA. However, the present system and procedure is very lengthy, and it is also not up to the mark,” he added.
“Due to the present procedure, the food samples and their details reach us after a considerable gap of time. But with the FSMS software, we would overcome all such problems. Because as soon as the samples are collected by the FSO, they would have to enter the details of each sample and submit it online, and in this way the samples would be submitted to us in real time,” Koshia said.
“The 270 devices with GPRS connectivity and FSMS software would be useful gadgets for the food safety officers,” he added.