Staff crunch ails food safety department

TIRUPATI: Staff crunch in the food safety department, coupled with lack of necessary infrastructure, seems to be taking a big toll on the public health in the state as many unregulated erring food outlets are going undetected.

The recent raids in Chittoor and Prakasam districts by the food safety officials exposed the menace of adulterated food items like milk and ghee. Though the department is supposed to conduct regular raids to control such malpractices, manpower shortage is coming in the way.

There are only four food safety inspectors (FSO) in Chittoor district, which has a population of around 41.74 lakh –  12.31 lakh in urban and 29.42 lakh in rural areas (2011 census). As per the guidelines of WHO (World Health Organisation), there should one FSO for every 50,000 urban population or one lakh rural population. As such, there is a need for at least 24 FSOs for urban areas and over 30 FSOs in rural areas in the district, besides infrastructure and laboratories.

The department is woefully inadequate in respect of staff and infrastructure, with the result that there are no tabs on thousands of licensed and unlicensed businesses across the district. It also suffers from acute shortage of vehicles, and depends on public transportation or own vehicles. There are more than 25,000-30,000 small and big hotels, shops, restaurants and stalls in the district, of which over 1000-1500 are in Tirupati city alone.

Faced with such hurdles, issuing licence, checking safety norms etc has become a tedious job for the FSOs. “We are taking steps to recruit at least 30 FSOs and also steps are being taken to have full-time designated officers. A proposal has already been sent to the government in this regard,” a senior food safety inspector said on condition of anonymity.

However, despite skeletal staff and inadequate infrastructure, as the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data for 2019 shows, AP registered 402 cases under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006. It comes third after UP and Maharashtra with 1027 and 497 cases respectively. Telangana managed to register only 222 cases in 2019.