To enhance the performance and responsibility among the drug and food regulators, the Gujarat government for the first time has decided to adopt a performance based promotion and appraisal system in the state from this financial year onwards. Earlier, the employees of the Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA) were given their yearly appraisal rating based on the quantity of work claimed to have been accomplished by them rather than the quality for getting promotions and other benefits.

The main objective behind this initiative is to encourage the drug regulators in strengthening their work ethics further, so as to more effectively assist the Gujarat FDCA in attaining its goal of providing only safe and efficacious drugs to the patients across the state. Interestingly, this strategic step has been taken by the government after careful deliberation and analysis of the current working system so as to remove all the bottlenecks that will affect the peaceful functioning of the drug and food regulatory system.

The new appraisal procedure enforced will be based on the careful analysis of the targets achieved by the officials, as submitted by them. They will have to in detail enumerate and provide elaborate information of their tasks accomplished like number of successful raids conducted, spurious or not of standard drugs detected, cases effectively filed in the court against the culprits, follow up and information on the investigation undertaken, DPCO cases reported and actions taken against the same etc.

According to Dr H G Koshia, commissioner Gujarat FDCA, it is a very progressive step taken by the state government to push all the officials in not just working for the target but effectively put in their best of their capabilities to test. He stated that under the new rule all the drug and food regulators and officials working under the aegis of the enforcement agency will have to undergo stringent scrutiny check to get an appraisal.

The procedure will be broadly conducted in two segments, wherein, work of all the assistant commissioners and designated officers (DO) from the food and drug departments from all the districts will be reviewed and rated by the respected district commissioners or head. While the district commissioners and other high level officials performance will be scrutinised and rated by the state government based on their credentials and also by taking into consideration the overall performance of the district they are in charge of.

“This will help in better understanding for building greater sense of responsibility and accountability among the workforce, as priority will be given to only those who work smartly in accordance with the organisations area of interest. Moreover, this is one of the best way to incentivise the officials to work proactively to further help us in upgrading our standard of work, especially since it will also help us in generating a healthy competition among the officials to perform the best of their capacity,” Dr Koshia added.