"Enforcement" need of the hour! Listen who is speaking!

Every citizen in India knows that the food safety monitoring regime in the country is nothing but an apology for an effective implementation system. We also know that the highly bureaucratized "Authority" in Delhi is so ineffective that honest citizens think that only God can protect them from dangerous, adulterated, fraudulent foods that flood Indian market unhindered and unchecked with practically no fear about the law of the land. Excuses are meted out without shame that there are shortages of personnel, lack of funds, grossly deficient infrastructure, slow judicial system etc, etc. Though the food safety law has been in force since many years, except for setting up committees, holding conferences, issuing diktat on trivial matters, nothing much is being done to set right the archaic food safety system in the country. Listen to the latest "declaration" from the toothless tiger while attending an innocuous inauguration ceremony about "the need of the hour" for implementing food safety regulations!  

"Chairman of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, New Delhi, K. Chandramouli, inaugurated the Food Testing Laboratory at the School of Food Technology in Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Kakinada (JUNTK) here on Sunday. Addressing the students, Mr. Chandramouli said acute shortage of laboratories remained the major challenge for food testing. "India has reached the stage of food sufficiency and now the focus has been shifted towards food quality," he said, adding that there was an immediate need of creating awareness among people on the importance of food quality. "Enforcement of food regulations to ensure delivery of qualitative food is the need of the hour," Mr. Chandramouli said."

A moot question that should be raised against the "Authority" is whose responsibility it is to "enforce" the Law? Does he expect the common man to enforce the law? Whose mistake is that there is shortage of trained personnel? Why is it that laboratories are not created and equipped with modern instruments even after so many years of passing the "Act"? Is there no accountability regarding non-performance in Government of India? Why is that Ministry of Health is administering country's food laws instead of the food processing industry ministry? There are more questions than answers! It is like adding insult to injury as far as the Indian citizen is concerned when high placed bureaucrats test his patience through such bland and irrelevant platitudes to hide their incapability!

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com