April 03, 2008	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 25, 1429

KARACHI, April 2: While the presence of adulterated food items on the market is an ever increasing concern, not a single person proven guilty of the crime in the subordinate court has ever actually served a term in any of the city’s prisons, Dawn has learnt.

Official sources said that many people have been prosecuted for the crime — that carries a maximum jail term of five years — and have been handed down sentences ranging from jail terms to heavy fines. While the fines have been paid in most of the cases, sentences concerning incarceration were all appealed and the violators were acquitted.

This was confirmed by the city government’s Chief Food Inspector, Abdul Waheed Bhatti, who told Dawn that magistrates have on many occasions handed down prison sentences in cases of adulteration but higher courts acquitted the culprits when the cases went into appeal. “The tenure of my service spans over a quarter of a century,” he said, “but I cannot recall a single case where a person who was sentenced to prison actually served the term. All the violators were acquitted upon lodging appeals against their sentences with the superior courts.”

According to Mr Bhatti, the hearing of over 2,000 adulteration cases registered between 2001 and 2007 are either under way or pending in various courts. Some cases have already been decided and fines were imposed on an estimated 200 violators while 15 were sentenced to prison terms of different lengths, depending on whether the violation was their first, second or third. While none of the people sentenced to jail have started serving their terms, all fines have been paid.

Poor conviction rate

If a sample collected by the city government’s food inspectors is declared contaminated by the laboratory, the case is sent to the magistrate’s court. The trial can stretch over many years and the conviction rate is as low as 10 to 20 per cent. Persons found guilty of food adulteration can be fined between Rs100 and Rs100,000, while prison terms can vary between one and five years, depending on whether the accused is a first-, second- or third-time violator.

One of the reasons behind the poor conviction rate, said sources, was the fact that a number of senior and retired food inspectors had started offering legal services and were focussing on adulteration-related cases in particular. As insiders who have worked in the food department for decades and are familiar with the legal and operational shortcomings of the field, they have a higher rate of acquittal for their clients.

While there is no legal bar against former food inspectors practising law after retiring from the food department, it is nevertheless ironic that men who spent decades trying to bring violators to book have chosen to spend their retirement years defending people accused of food adulteration. Certainly the accused persons have the right to put up a defence case and are presumed innocent until proved guilty. However, the situation also reflects upon the respect with which retirees regard the efforts made by their former subordinates who continue to serve in the food department.

Another practical difficulty in mounting a successful prosecution was offered by Mr Bhatti. “The neighbours or customers of a trader whose ware is being checked interestedly watch the process of sample collection but rarely agree to become official witnesses. They are either reluctant to give evidence against their neighbour or neighbourhood shopkeeper, or they are wary of lengthy legal proceedings that easily stretch to a few years,” he said. “As a result, the food inspectors are left with little choice but to rely on the evidence given by their own staff. During trials, this is the most common reason that the accused persons are acquitted by the courts, which place little reliance on the evidence submitted by a food inspector’s subordinate staff.”

He added that while 70 to 80 per cent of the people accused of adulteration are usually acquitted, none have ever filed damages for defamation cases against the city government.

Mr Bhatti urged private citizens to come forward as witnesses in cases of food adulteration since the health of the entire nation hinges upon this.

Departmental inadequacies

The procedure for checking the purity of food items on the market is relatively simple but the food department’s staff and operational inadequacies make the task formidable and contribute to no little extent towards the low conviction rate. Food inspectors employed by the city government visit various localities and take random samples; each sample is divided between three sealed containers, one for the shopkeeper’s records, another for the food department’s records and the third to be sent to the city government’s laboratory for examination. Over a hundred food items are listed under the Pure Food laws as commodities whose samples ought to be taken for verifying their purity. In practice, however, samples of only about 50 common food items are actually collected and sent for examination.

Sources within the department confirmed that there are only 13 food inspectors to check the many thousands of shops selling edible products, food items and raw ingredients in the 18 towns that comprise the country’s most populous city of over 15 million people. Each inspector is required to collect 50 samples every month, and the department requires that at least 20 per cent of the samples submitted should fail in the laboratory examination, ie be identified as contaminated and below the standards prescribed by the Pure Food laws. According to Chief Food Inspector Bhatti, the stipulation of failing samples was set in order to ensure that inspectors did not favour violators. He told Dawn that the 13 food inspectors employed by the city government collect a total of about 650 samples every month, of which roughly 20 per cent turn out to be adulterated. “Between Jan 1, 2007 and Dec 31, 2007, more than 6,450 samples were collected and of these, the laboratory declared over 760 contaminated or unfit for human consumption,” he said.

Grave risks

As inflation rises and food resources become increasingly strained in Pakistan, the issue of adulteration takes on extremely grave consequences.

Various sources pointed out that adulteration is already so obvious that it can be seen everywhere. “Take the example of a shop that sells raw red chillies at a higher price than powdered red chillies,” said a source. “This is an obvious indication that something fishy is going on since powdering the chillies requires substantial sums to be spent in grinding, the profit made by the person doing the grinding, and wastages.”

Mr Bhatti suggested that there be at least one food inspector in each union council so that sufficient food samples could be taken to check the scourge of food adulteration. He added that the city government’s laboratory should be upgraded and provided modern equipment and increased technically qualified staff that could carry out quick examinations.

Such measures must be taken urgently in order to make the process of curbing food adulteration flawless, and gaining the confidence of millions of citizens who need high-quality food to maintain their health and avoid becoming a burden on the country’s already overstretched healthcare system.