A modern and high-tech National Food Safety Laboratory was built last year at a cost of Tk220m to ensure safe food is now lying idle due to manpower shortage.
The laboratory, situated in the Institute of Public Health building at Mohakhali, was inaugurated by the Health and Family Welfare Minister AFM Ruhal Haque on October last year. Although the laboratory is ready for operation but the Public Administration ministry is yet to fill up 50 important posts that are integral for its operation.
A project ‘Improving Food Safety in Bangladesh’ started in 2009 with the assistance of European Union under the supervision the UN agency Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Several high officials of health ministry stated that it has now become a common practice to establish an institution without employing efficient people to run it. At present the laboratory is operation on trial basis with the aid of 14 medical technologists, a third-class staff of the Institute of Public Health. Health and food experts that the laboratory should have been in operation much earlier to save the people from taking adulterated food.
In recent years, food adulteration has posed extreme health hazards to people all over the country. Formalin, insecticides, pesticides and other chemicals are found in almost hundreds of food items – fish, meat, fruits, vegetables, juices, sweets, milk, oil, ghee etc. The general people are very cautious and worried about food now-a-days. Even though the Pure Food Act 1959 was amended in 2005, nobody obeys the present law.
On Thursday, Paribesh Banchao Andolan in a report said 94% mangoes and 100% litchis were found soaked in formalin in the capital. After the report was published in the newspapers a mobile court carried out a search at Karwanbazar, the largest kitchen market in the capital, where they found the presence of formalin in fruits and the court destroyed four maunds of mangoes.
Prof Dr Rashide Mahbub, president of the health rights movement national committee said the government should take serious steps to ensure food safety.
A B M Faruquee, Prof of Pharmacy Department and health activists, said in the past there was no food adulteration. “We should go for traditional preservation system if we want to save our future generation from food adulteration,” he said.
Prof Dr Mahmudur Rahman, Director of the Institute of Epidemiological Disease Control and Research said “We have found different types of pesticides in fruits. Last year several children died after eating litchi from litchi gardens.”
While visiting the National Food Safety Laboratory on Thursday this correspondent saw for himself the high-tech machinery like High-performance Liquid Chromatography, High-performance Thin Layer Chromatography, Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy, Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry, and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry machines.
Prof Dr Shah Monir Hossain, ex-Director General of the health services and Senior National Adviser of FAO and food safety programme said the laboratory is almost ready but it is not yet functioning due to shortage of manpower. “It is not possible to start this high-tech lab without expert people.”
He said at the beginning of the project the EU provided financial assistance. But now the Netherland government is giving financial support through FAO to the health ministry to improve food safety in Bangladesh. A national food safety policy has been finalised by experts to ensure food safety. It might be sent to parliament very soon. The laboratory will start functioning regularly from August, he hoped.
