PESHAWAR: The Directorate of Food Safety and Halal Food Authority has delegated its powers to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Food Department to ensure provision of hygienic, safe and Halal food to the people.

“We are in the process of establishing directorate, which will be completed within a month. Meantime, we have delegated powers to food department, which has already staff to check the quality of edible items,” Riaz Mahsud, the director-general of the authority, told Dawn.

According to him, the directorate is being established to implement the KP Food Safety Authority Act, 2017 and ensure that the consumers receive good quality and Halal food articles and beverages.

“It will take a month for us to complete the recruitment process for the newly-established directorate due to which we have given all the powers to the food department to carry out full-fledged activities throughout the province,” he said.

Official says completion of directorate to take one month

Mr Mahsud said that a total of 475 staffers were being employed including food safety officers with MPhil and PhD degrees in nutrition and food sciences besides other people to make the Authority operational.

“As stop-gap arrangements, the food department has started performing our functions as it has the services of food controllers at divisional and district level with support staff that started campaign against adulteration,” he said.

Mr Mahsud said that they would deploy food safety officers in all 77 tehsil municipal administrations (TMAs) in all districts and they would be tasked to check the quality of foodstuff in their areas of jurisdiction.

“All the TMAs would get food safety officers on the basis of the population,” he said.

He said that the number of food safety officers in a TMA would depend on its population. The food safety officers would report to assistant directors.

Mr Mahsud said that under the new law, penalties for violators had been increased along with other actions including sealing off outlets permanently and temporarily.

“The minimum penalty is Rs25,000. Prior to the new law, the penalties in the Food Act, 1964 were less due to which the violators couldn’t be deterred,” he said.

Under the new law, business outlets would get higher penalties while those closing down their shops to avoid inspections would face hard punishments.

The violators of the law would also face legal action for which FIRs would be lodged, he said. “The responsibility of the directorate would be to ensure that all the food manufactured, processed, stored, kept, packaged or sold were safe and healthy,” said Mr Mahsud.

Published in Dawn, January 2nd, 2018