Food adulteration penalties to go up by 10 times: Telangana minister KT Rama Rao

HYDERABAD: Penalties against food adulteration that has become one of the major causes of health problems and diseases among people will be increased by 10 times in Greater Hyderabad and all other parts of Telangana.
Municipal administration and urban development minister KT Rama Rao said a decision has been taken to enhance the penalties as the present rates are meagre. Presently, the penalties are not more than a few hundreds of rupees and as a result, officials are finding it difficult to control food adulteration.
Though the Food Safety Act, an archaic law, comes under the purview of the central government, the minister said new guidelines with huge penalities would be framed at the state level with the approval of the state cabinet.
He was replying during question hour in the state assembly to a question raised by MIM MLAs Akbaruddin Owaisi, Mumtaz Ahmed Khan, Jaffar Hussain, Ahmed Pasha Quadri, Ahmed Balala and Kausar Mohiuddin that inadequate number of food safety officers was hitting regular inspection of food items. They said the city is also faced with insufficient lab facilities.
The minister admitted that that the number of food safety officers to monitor food establishments in Telangana state in general and particularly in GHMC is inadequate.
However, he made it clear that there was no impact of shortage of manpower and insufficient lab facilities on regular inspection of food items. The necessary steps were being taken up for regular analysis of food samples on inspection of food establishments and ingredients from industries with the available staff and existing lab facilities. On an average, 150 samples were being lifted per month.
Further, KTR said the government had issued orders for filling up of 26 posts of food inspector for GHMC and that the recruitment is under process.
On the lab facilities, KTR said the lab at Nacharam is sufficient to deal with sample testing from not only Greater Hyderabad but from other parts of the state. Also, the state government has pressed into service mobile lab testing vehicles, he added.