The Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has undertaken a massive activity of reinstating FDA officials who are facing suspensions based on Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) clearance.

Considering the fact that only 100 drug inspectors are serving as the field force to keep an oversight on 80,000 drug retail stores and 800 odd manufacturing units towards maintaining compliance levels, Maharashtra FDA has also sent a comprehensive proposal to the state government for recruitment of new staff across the state. There are a total of 161 drug inspectors posts sanctioned for the state of Maharashtra.

Informed Maharashtra FDA Commissioner Dr Pallavi Darade, “We are regularly reviewing the track record of FDA officials who have faced suspensions due to some reasons and where reviews were not taken for more than 6 months on that account based on reports and clearances from the ACB. Due to this exercise, 3 officials have recently been reinstated.”

“Besides this, we have also asked the state government to promote Drug Inspectors to Assistant Commissioners level so that manpower could be upgraded and career progression could be ensured at the drug inspector’s level which was not been addressed so far,” she added.

Maharashtra FDA has a total of seven divisions with seven joint commissioners respectively who are responsible to oversee compliance to the Drugs act in their respective jurisdictions. The state regulator has also asked for 400 more drug inspectors in the existing field force to oversee compliance in a more effective way.

Around 17 vehicles will also be added to the existing fleet as a part of the strengthening of regulatory mechanism in the state for which administrative approval has been received from the finance department. As part of digitising the operations of drug inspectors in the state, tablets for the same has been purchased by the Information Technology (IT) department of the state government.

A first of its kind microbiological testing lab at a cost of Rs.4.5 crore is also coming up at the Mumbai headquarters to do microbiological testing . Besides this, administrative approval from the Finance department has been received recently and funds to the tune of Rs.17 crore will be allocated for the Nagpur project for strengthening labs and manpower.