Food safety officer sends dal instead of rice for testing

Chennai

Absent For 7 Months, Drew Full Salary

A food safety officer in Tiruvallur has been found responsible for his office sending a sample of dal instead of rice for testing to the government laboratory concerned. Besides, S Muthukumar did not report to work for a single day for seven months, but drew full salary for the period.

The incident came to light while an RTI activist was inspecting records in the office in connection with a food safety complaint he filed in July 2016.

M Kasimayan, a motor mechanic from Thiruvottiyur, lodged a complaint with the Tamil Nadu Food Safety and Drug Control Administration department about poor quality rice being sold at a grocery in the neighbourhood.

The complaint was forwarded to the designated food safety officer in Tiruvallur district, but appropriate action was taken. Grieved, Kasimayan filed a Right to Information (RTI) petition with the food safety department a few months later. He received a five kg of irrelevant documents after he went for a second appeal with the state information commission. He had sought details only about follow-ups to his complaint filed in July 2016, but the department sent details of all complaints it received since July 2016 Kasimayan then sought permission under section 2 (j) of the RTI Act 2005 to scrutinise records pertaining to the case. Scrutinising the records he got this month, he found the officers concerned sent tur dal instead of rice for testing to the government food analysis laboratory , Salem.

The dal sample was also declared `misbranded' by the lab, the results for which were not revealed to Kasimayan.Misbranding of food attracts up to `3 lakh in fine under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006.

A senior state food safety wing official said they collected all possible samples, including rice, from the Thiruvottiyur grocery and reports on other samples were awaited.

Further, the attendance register of the said office showed Muthukumar, the designated officer, hadn't reported to work in seven months.

“It is not mandatory for the designated officer, head of the department, to sign the register everyday as might be busy conducting field inspections. However, efforts would be made to cross-check the register,“ the official said.

Referring to government order 99 which says grievance petitions should be redressed within a month, Kasimayan said that contrarily it had taken almost a year for the department to check whether the official concerned was reporting to his office regularly or not.