There is acute shortage of food chemists in the Department of Food Safety under Delhi Government’s Health Department. There is just one laboratory and three chemists for the entire city testing the food samples of the President of India, Prime Minister and the VVIPs. Ironically, the Department of Food Safety has formed 11 teams for checking food safety norms but there are only 11 food inspectors! This means Delhi has one food safety inspector for a 16 lakh population.
Food Safety and Security Act was notified in February 2013 making registration of eateries in the national Capital mandatory. Till date, only 8,042 licences have been issued for 5,769 eateries. It is estimated that over 3 lakh-5 lakh greasy spoons are in Delhi.
Presently, the department has 13 food safety officials and nine licensing authorities. Of them, two food safety officials have sought voluntary retirement. Moreover, the department needs at least 12 laboratory chemists to test samples. But there are only three and they too seem preoccupied with testing of food samples of VVIPs, including the Prime Minister and President of India. Delhi Government’s laboratory is located on lawrence Road.
According to officials, the department needs 60-70 inspectors and officers and over a dozen laboratory chemists to check food quality in restaurant chains, malls, hotels, markets and street food. Insiders say the department has only 35-40 employees handling testing, lifting of samples, registration of eateries and issuing licences.
Food and Safety Commissioner KK Jindal said they have urged the Government to recruit more personnel for the department.On the one hand, the Government claims to turn Delhi into a world-class city while on the other, food safety norms suffer because of paucity of trained officers and a single laboratory conducting tests on food samples in all the 11 revenue districts of the Capital.
Every year around Diwali, kilos of adulterated and artificial sweets and other food items like khoya, mawa, ghee, milk, cheese, dry fruits, flour, oil etc are seized from across the country, including Delhi and NCR.
“The sale and consumption of sweets rise quantum around Diwali. In their greed, traders and sweet makers use subpar products to inflate profits, leaving the consumers vulnerable to afflictions like food poisoning, skin allergies, stomach ache and other infections,” said officials.