Jamshedpur, Aug. 13: The East Singhbhum district administration today started a surprise inspection at sweet shops to check sale of adulterated food items ahead of the festive season.
Acting on a directive of Dhalbhum SDO Suraj Kumar, two teams were constituted under separate magistrates — Jamshedpur BDO Parul Singh and executive magistrate Yesmita Singh — for the daylong drive that covered four sweet shops.
The raids will continue in the coming days.
There are nearly 180 sweet shops in and around Jamshedpur, which witness a sharp surge in demand during Raksha Bandhan (August 18) and Vishwakarma Puja (September 17).
“This is a preemptive measure to stop sale of adulterated and substandard food items, especially sweets, which are in high demand during the festive season. The magistrates are being assisted by health department officials, who are collecting the samples. The idea is to create a sense of fear among mithai-makers indulging in malpractices during the festive rush,” said SDO Kumar.
According to East Singhbhum civil surgeon Dr S.K. Jha, two medical officers of sadar hospital, Dr Maheshwar Prasad and Dr Swarn Singh, assisted the teams.
Till the filing of this report, sweet samples were collected from four prominent shops located in commercial hubs of the city. They are Bhola Maharaj in Sakchi, Puja Sweets in Bhalubasa, Golmuri Misthanna Bhandar in Golmuri and Bangal Bhog in Kadma.
“We are primarily collecting samples of khua and chenna, primary raw materials for preparing sweets. From each shop, we collected four samples (200 gram each) of khua and chenna, which will be sent to the food testing lab in Namkum (near Ranchi),” said Dr Swarn Singh.
East Singhbhum additional chief medical officer Vibha Sharan said that they were hoping to receive the chemical analysis reports of the samples from Ranchi within a fortnight. If any shop owner is found to have used adulterated raw materials for making sweets, action will be taken against them by East Singhbhum deputy commissioner Amitabh Kaushal under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006.
According to the Act that was revised in 2012, sale of adulterated products detrimental to health can invite a hefty fine of anything between Rs 25,000 and Rs 2 lakh.
