KARACHI: City Mayor Waseem Akhtar on Friday warned the staff of the food and quality control lab of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation to be ready for their dismissal if they continued to be complacent about adulteration or were found to be in cahoots with adulterators and makers of substandard food.

“All those involved or the ones acting as facilitators in selling contaminated or substandard food to citizens should be ready for strict legal and administrative action against them,” said the mayor during an unscheduled inspection of the KMC food and quality control and laboratory department.

“No one can be allowed to play with the health of citizens through food adulteration or selling contaminated eatables,” he said.

The mayor said that from what he had observed, the people of Karachi were being fed “poison”.

“All those who indulge in selling substandard food are warned that we will not allow them to do so from now on,” he said.

Those who were found involved in wrongful practices of producing adulterated food items would be booked for the crime, he added.

During the visit, Mayor Akhtar checked the machinery, equipment and drugs used in the laboratory and inquired about their usage from doctors, biologists, chemists and others.

He was perturbed at seeing that 90 per cent of testing machines were out of order. He found cylinders and first aid boxes empty and other equipment and machines not fit for use.

“No one — neither a minister nor any officer from the government — has inspected this place in the past eight years, but we will now bring better and honest staff here to run this department,” he commented.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2017