New FDA building awaits administrative nod for labs

 

 

 

The new building of Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), situated in front of Freemason’s hall in Civil Lines is awaiting its inauguration. The reason of delay is pendency of administrative approval for the added allocation of funds for the separate laboratories of food and drugs at 4th and 5th floor, with the Government. The building is Ground plus 5 floors with first two floors for set-up for administrative work and top three storey dedicated to laboratory work while the ground floor is parking lot. FDA doesn’t have laboratory housed in its own building at present. The technicians or the concerned staff has to move to the laboratories for inspection of various samples. The laboratory supposed to test almost 2,500 food samples and 500 drug samples annually approximately. Since the laboratory is somewhere, the transportation takes a lot of time leading to delay in declaration of samples’ results. This new building will resolve major issues being faced by FDA.

 

At present, FDA operates from new administrative building in front of Zilla Parishad office. PWD spent Rs 17 crore which was estimated before the start of project. Now, FDA needs separate laboratories for food and drugs at 4th and 5th floor for which PWD has sent an administrative proposal with the estimated cost of another Rs 19 crore. The set-up of these two laboratories will be state-of-the-art. The approval will lead to further work and then it would be completed. The laboratories are to be developed with a micro management where all care is to be taken. As per the norms, the outer infection should not enter the lab as it may affect the sample results. There should not be any contamination of products- either food or drugs.

 

These are some of the things which need to be well taken care of plus there are certain strict norms which are to be followed during the functioning of laboratories. The proposal of this new building of FDA first came in 2017. In 2018 it received green signal and it was supposed to be completed in next two years. As many such projects were affected due to coronavirus pandemic, this new building of FDA was one of those. The project got delayed and was completed in 2022 with the estimated cost of about Rs 17 crore. The land where this set-up has been developed is owned by FDA itself.