Implementation of food safety Act put on the back burner

Minister for Health and Family WelfareU.T. Khader addressing presspersons in Mysuruon Sunday

Govt. reluctant to deploy medical officers as designated officers

Has the food safety regulation taken a back seat in the State? It seems so. The Department of Health and Family Welfare is averse to redeploying the government medical officers as the designated officers (DOs) for enforcing the Food Safety and Standards Act (FSSA) citing shortage of doctors.

As many as 21 senior medical officers, who were deployed as designated officers in the State have been repatriated to their respective districts. Some of them were holding additional responsibilities assigned to them by the Health Department, which was given the task of implementing FSSA. To a query related to this, Minister for Health U.T. Khader on Sunday said: “The Health Department works suffered when the medical officers were deputed to enforce FSSA. Health is our priority and not food safety enforcement. We had sent a request to the Centre to delink the Department of Health from enforcement of FSSA, requested that the department should be relieved of the responsibility of enforcing FSSA, but the Centre directed us to continue with the task of enforcing the Act.” According to the Minister, officers of the rank of the Assistant Commissioner or the Tahsildar may be given additional charge of designated officer to implement FSSA.Mr. Khader added that the government is mulling over roping in suitable candidates with relevant qualification for implementing FSSA without making any changes to the C and R Rules. “It’s tough to redeploy the government medical officers to the post of designated officer.”

As per the norms, the post of the designated officer for implementing the FSSA, should be held by a sub-divisional officer or a medical officer who has put in more than 10 years in the department, or a person with post-graduation in subjects such as chemistry, microbiology, biochemistry with the rank of a sub-divisional officer.

The food safety wings in several districts were under the control of the food safety officers since January this year. The absence of a ‘team leader’ (DOs) may come in the way of spreading the importance of food safety since the DOs had been empowered to monitor and sometimes lead the inspections/raids to check if food items were within the parameters of FSSA or adulterated.

Khader says they plan to appoint people of the sub-divisional officer’s rank as DOs