Muktsar's food safety drive stalled; vehicle unavailability for 7 months hampers sample collection

The seriousness of the health authorities in keeping a check on food adulteration can be gauged from the fact that they remained virtually unable to collect food samples for nearly seven months in Muktsar district — all due to a non-functional vehicle.

Talking to The Tribune, Dr Dupinder Kumar, District Health Officer (DHO), Muktsar, said they had a target of lifting 20 samples per month, which meant 240 samples per year. However, they managed to collect only 139 samples last year, primarily due to the lack of a functional vehicle.

“The official car provided to us by a private company contracted by the department remained non-functional for almost seven months. As a result, we faced several difficulties in lifting samples, and other work like inspection of eateries and some factories was also badly affected. Last year, we could collect only 139 food samples, out of which 13 failed the quality test,” said the DHO.

He added, “Whenever we required a car for our field visits, we had to write to the Civil Surgeon’s office. We also wrote to the head office to blacklist the private company that was providing the car, which eventually led to a functional vehicle being provided recently.”