Andhra Pradesh to have full-fledged IPM, food lab by January next

VIJAYAWADA: After a long wait, Andhra Pradesh will get its own full-fledged Institute of Preventive Medicine (IPM) to analyse samples mainly of food and blood by January next year.

The authorities submitted all necessary information pertaining to division of all major components of the IPM between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as per norms of Schedule X of AP Reorganisation Act, 2014, and the AP government is going to finalise it soon to announce a separate IPM for it.

In the aftermath of the bifurcation of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh by setting up a new state of Telangana in June, 2014, division of the IPM between both AP and Telangana has been pending except for setting up an IPM for AP at Gollapudi with skeletal staff with no clear cut sharing of human resources, equipment and assets.

The IPM has a sanctioned strength of 800 staff and with its division, they will be divided at the 58:42 ratio between AP and Telangana and accordingly, AP will get nearly 351 members on its side.

The IPM, working on a temporary basis in AP, has a director and a gazette assistant food controller with nearly 30 technical personnel working at its headquarters at Gollapudi. Once it is established in a full-fledged manner, its main administrative office will be set up at the capital city and the existing regional food lab is going to be developed as a state food lab in Visakhapatnam by June, 2022.

The IPM sources say that since shifting of its administrative office to AP in October, 2017, on a temporary basis, it has been functioning with inadequate staff and efforts to divide it between AP and Telangana as per norms of the bifurcation Act proved futile since then as its staff working in Telangana allegedly have been raising a series of queries to stall the process of division as it is benefitting a section of them to get even double promotion in quick succession. Sources say that as it is mandatory for mutual consent of both AP and Telangana to go ahead with official division of IPM, lack of cooperation from the staff, mainly those hailing from AP and settled in Telangana and also unwilling to return to AP, stalled the process.

Sources say that once the IPM is set up in AP, it requires to take up filling up several administrative and technical posts and also to strengthen labs with installation of state-of-the-art technology besides appointing doctors and others to expand the scope of its activity.

An IPM’s senior official said, “We have submitted proposals for bifurcation of the IPM to be set up in AP’s capital city at a cost of Rs 9 crore and we are expecting to get clearance from the AP government shortly. We are expecting to set up AP’s IPM in January, 2022 or even earlier, as once we get the clearance, we have to seek objections for a period of 15 days. Civil works for setting up IPM are entrusted to AP Medical Services and Infrastructure Development Corporation and based on the scope for activities, we will have to recruit manpower to provide a series of services for the benefit of the people in AP.”