Tell how many Food Safety Officer posts are needed for State, asks HC

Go by the population of the State in your assessment, govt. told

Noting that the government was constitutionally bound to look after the health and well-being of people, the Telangana High Court on Thursday directed the State government to file an affidavit on the number of Food Safety Officers required to be recruited for the entire State.

A division bench of Chief Justice Raghvendra Singh Chauhan and Justice A. Abhishek Reddy passed this direction, while hearing a PIL plea on usage of carbide for artificial ripening of fruits. A news report on how carbide was being used for artificially ripening fruits in a Telugu daily and how health of people was being adversely affected by this had been taken up as PIL by the HC in 2015.

After hearing contentions of counsel, the bench instructed the Principal Secretary of Medical and Health to ascertain how many Food Safety Officers were required to keep tabs on different types of food contamination and initiate legal action against the offenders. While assessing the required number of posts, the government should not go by how many such posts were created in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Karnataka, the bench said in its interim direction.

But the government should take into account the population of the State and assess the number of Food Safety Officer posts required to look after the health of people, the bench said in its order. It also instructed the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) to fill 36 posts of Food Safety Inspector/Food Safety Officer lying vacant out of the 61 posts created by the government. Posts of six Gazetted Food Inspector and one post of Assistant Food Controller, along with the above posts, should be filled within two months, said the order.

The bench ordered the government to file an affidavit on the measures it had taken to curtail production of carbide and how it was controlling availability of carbide in the market. It sought to know how many persons the government had prosecuted for misuse of carbide till the end of November 2019.

The plea was posted for January 6, 2020.