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With 80,000 licences issued, Maharashtra FDA leads licensing under FSSA
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Monday, 30 January, 2012, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Irum Khan, Mumbai
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Maharashtra is one of the leading states with regard to converting the old licences under Prevention of Food Adulteration, Act, 1954, into those under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006.
Till now over 80,000 PFA licences from the existing 1,07,000, have been converted. This was confirmed by Maharashtra food safety commissioner Mahesh Zagade, in a one-on-one with FnB News.
The new licensing regime was initiated on August 5, 2011, when the FSSA had come into force. It aims to bring the food industry under one umbrella by scrapping all old licences.
Now, Maharashtra FDA (Food and Drug Administration) targets March 31, 2012, for completing the licensing and registration procedure in the state. Although, the work done till now is more than the combined effort put together by enforcement wings across India, claimed a source from the industry connected to the FDA.
However, the fact remains that there are around 16 lakh food business operators (FBOs) in Maharashtra. Reaching out to them, and getting them registered or obtain licences would indeed be a gigantic task.
Where implementation of FSSA is concerned, Maharashtra has taken the biggest leap forward under the leadership of Zagade who joined office only on August 29, 2011. His effort has helped Maharashtra turn into a model state for the rest to follow.
His first initiative was to strengthen the organisation. Creation of six posts of joint commissioners and their redesignation as adjudication officers (AOs) was a vital step for strengthening the judicial infrastructure of the authority. Creation of another 62 posts of designated officers (DO) was the next progressive step.
The FDA is also upgrading the existing ranks of food inspectors working as Class 3 officers to Class 2 officers and redesignating them as food safety officers (FSOs). For the 16 lakh FBOs in the country, Maharashtra would have over 300 FSOs. Their distribution would be based on the regional densities of the FBOs. “We are reorganising the entire jurisdiction of FSOs and DOs and would allocate work on the basis of the number of the FBOs present in a region,” Zagade said.
Zagade is also striving to strengthen the sampling analysis mechanism. For this, the number of laboratories, both mobile and static, would be increased. “We want to have one full-fledged laboratory for every four-five districts and one mobile lab for every district,” Zagade said.
The commissioner now wants to use his long administrative e experience to put things straight at the FDA. One, he intends to connect all FDA offices in Maharashtra and plan a systematic data flow. “We want to streamline the working of all the offices in Maharashtra through computerisation,” Zagade suggested.
One step towards this was launching the pilot software for making licensing procedure on-line in January 2012. “We convinced the FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) to choose Mumbai and Thane as two regions for launching the pilot project. Now, we are consistently in touch with the NISG (National Institute of Smart Governance), Hyderabad, which created the software, for constant upgrade,” Zagade informed.
Zagade also wants to bring in a permanent solution to the problem of milk adulteration, Maharashtra being one of the leading producers of milk.
“Raids do not work, we need to have a permanent solution in place. Though FDA is monitoring adulteration cases on continued basis, the number of outlets is so vast that complete control is not easy. Things are improving, however. We are trying to have a structured programme that deals with milk adulteration on a permanent basis,” Zagade said.
The task ahead for Zagade is not that easy, however, he is determined and anticipates cooperation from the industry.
“We want to operationalise all regulations,” Zagade encapsulated his ambitious intention into a tiny statement.
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