LAHORE, April 2: The City District Government will withdraw its food inspectors from towns and assign them inspection of foodstuffs instead of bringing its operations in conformity with the Punjab Local Government Ordinance provisions.

CDG food squad incharge Chaudhry Munir Ahmed said the withdrawal of food inspectors from town was necessary for the food quality control was the responsibility of district governments and not the town administrations under the local government law.

The judicial magistrates posted in towns were thus hearing the food adulteration cases without jurisdiction, but no magistrate had been posted for trial of food cases at the district level.

He said different punishments had been prescribed for the first, second and third offences under the Pure Food Ordinance. But, the food squad could not prosecute adulterators for the second and third offences because it was not aware of the fate of 7,208 challans submitted to town magistrates during the last year for lack of any feedback from courts.

Over 60,000 soft drink bottles, more than 10,000 kgs of spurious tomato ketchup, over 1,500 kgs of fake 'desi ghee' and over 3,500 kgs of adulterated red chili powder and spices sealed after registration of 494 cases were rotting in the CDG warehouse for nothing was known about the fate of cases.

He said the campaign against food adulteration had failed to produce desired results because the judicial magistrates posted in towns were imposing nominal fines on food adulterators without sending them to jail as prescribed in the Pure Food Ordinance.

Only the magistrates with section powers could sentence the food adulterators to three to five years imprisonment and fines upto Rs100,000 under the law, but not even a single judicial magistrate posted in the towns had the powers, he added.