The State government established Telangana Standards Authority for Food and Essential (TG SAFE) drugs by merging the Food Safety and Drugs Control departments and posted Avinash Mohanty as its Commissioner. While the order constituting was issued on August 4, it came into force on August 15.
As per an order issued by Health department principal secretary Dr. Christina Z Chongthu, the TGSAFE would comprise six wings – drug administration, food safety, legal and prosecution, legal and prosecution, laboratory and administrative.
The drug administration wing will deal with licensing, inspection, sampling, testing, investigation and regulatory function, while food safety will handle licensing, registration, inspection, sampling, testing and enforcement functions.
Chongthu said the enforcement wing will function in coordination with the statutory wings of drug administration and food safety, to augment their functioning through intelligence gathering, risk-based inspections, prosecution support etc initially attached from the Police department.
