KARACHI: Sindh government on Tuesday made the Sindh Food Authority (SFA) fully functional due to a number of cases all around the province related to unhygienic and contaminated food.
The SFA will be fully operational in Karachi first but will subsequently branch out to other districts gradually. The SFA will ensure the availability of safe food products and will regulate other food related services in the city.
This announcement was made by the Minister of Food and Parliamentary affairs Nisar Ahmed Khuhro at a press conference where he further stated that the provincial food authority has been established following a law passed by the Sindh Assembly on March 8, 2017.
A board of governors has been established for the SFA, whose dominion will gradually be expanded to the entire province. The food minister will head the board along with the health secretary and food secretary who will act as vice chairman and convener, respectively.
Provincial secretaries of the departments of culture, agriculture, social welfare, local government, public health engineering as well as three nominated members of the Sindh Assembly and a representative of the chamber of commerce and industry are a part of the committee. The deputy commissioners posted in different districts of the province are among the other members of the board.
The authority is mainly going to inspect hotels, restaurants, food markets, food industries, bakeries, dairy and meat shops, mineral water companies, departmental stores and other food-related outlets and industrial units in the beginning.
The basic aim is to take care of the concerns about the quality of the food products provided to the public. The minister further said, “A thorough inspection will take place following a collection of samples of food and edible items that will be collected from such units and retail outlets and will be sent to laboratories for further inspection. In case they are found unfit for human consumption, the sellers and manufacturers would be penalized through fines and other punishments in accordance with the Sindh Food Authority Act 2016.”
Some 523 substandard food and edible products have been identified with harmful effects whose sale would not be allowed.
