The newly established Punjab Food Safety and Standards Authority (PFSSA) will provide specialised training to its officials and the officers under the Trade Related Technical Assistance (TRTA II) programme to ensure availability of safe and wholesome food for human consumption to the masses in the province.
The Authority has entered in to a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the UK based programme recently, said PFSSA Director General Muhammad Asad Islam Mahni, while talking to a select group of journalists the other day. He said the provincial government has decided to replace the decades old food inspection and monitoring system of the district administrations and the new system will be introduced in Lahore first as model and hopefully Lahorites may start getting pure food in the next couple of months.
Mahni said that though the authority was not yet empowered to initiate legal proceedings against any food producer or seller, but it had started the awareness creating campaign about food safety and regulations. In the first phase, the authority was sensitising the existing workforce of District Food Department, food processors, restaurants and shopkeepers, he maintained. 'We are having a session of present district government officers working in this field in Authority's office daily in the evening,' he added.
Mahni underscored that to ensure better food safety the authority had started monitoring food producing and processing practices in the city and issuing notices to the producers.