Sindh Food Authority made functional — in Karachi alone

To ensure the provision of safe food products and food-related services to the people of the province, the government has made the Sindh Food Authority (SFA) functional, which will begin working in Karachi and gradually expand its domain to other districts.

This was announced by Food and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro on Monday at a press conference held at the committee room of the Sindh Assembly building.

Flanked by Secretary for Food Sajjad Abbasi and the authority’s newly-appointed director general, Amjad Ali Laghari, Khuhro told journalists that the provincial food authority had been established in line with a law passed by the Sindh Assembly on March 8, 2017.

According to the minister, a board of governors for the SFA has also established whose domain would be eventually extended to the entire province. The board would be headed by the provincial food minister, while the health secretary will be its vice-chairman and food secretary its convener. Other members of the board would include 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. Moreover, deputy commissioners posted in different districts of the province would also be members of the board.

Khuhro said that the authority is tasked with the inspection of large and small hotels and restaurants, food markets, departmental stores, food industries, bakeries, dairy and meat shops, bottled water companies and other such food-related outlets and industrial units in the province through a system of inspectors.

Such inspection would be made with the viewpoint that the people of the province should be given high quality food products and services for their health and safety, he said. Khuhro added that samples of food and edible items would be collected from industrial units and retail outlets and sent to laboratories for scientific examination. In case they are found unfit for human consumption, the sellers and manufacturers would be penalised through fines and other punishments in accordance with the Sindh Food Authority Act 2016.

The food minister further said that the SFA has already identified some 523 substandard food and edible products having harmful effects whose sale would not be allowed. The Sindh government will not let unscrupulous elements play with the health of the people of Sindh, Khuhro said.

Wheat procurement

The minister went on to add that the government has set 1.4 million tonnes as a target for wheat procurement for the province this year and had obtained a Rs90 billion loan from the State Bank of Pakistan for the process to serve the interests of farmers and growers in the province.

According to him, the support price of wheat for the current year has been set at Rs1,300 per 40 kilogrammes and 500 centres have been established for procurement which would commence from next month, while new storage facilities for proper preservation of procured product would also be constructed.

He claimed that Sindh was likely to produce 5 million tonnes of wheat but the provincial food department would procure only 1.4 million tonnes.

Meanwhile, Khuhro, who is also the president of Sindh chapter of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, also announced on the occasion that Zafar Jhandar of the Sindh Dost Ittehad and a politician belonging to Naushehero Feroz Asif Shah, both present at the press conference, had joined PPP.