Oherald: Goa: Wednesday, September 12, 2018.
A document accessed under the Right To
Information Act has given credence to what most people believed right from the
day the government turned around to state that formalin in fish was within the
permissible limit. The spot test report on the fish was positive, and there was
enough evidence for the FDA Designated Officer (South) to believe that she
could confiscate the material and seal the trucks carrying the fish. Instead
she was forced to send the fish samples to the lab and then came a second
report that cleared the fish and the imported fish was then allowed to be sold
in the markets of Goa.
If there was any doubt that there was a
cover-up on the issue, this report of the spot test puts that to rest. The spot
report is clear that the formalin test was performed on all samples collected
by FDA officers, by the Schiff’s Reagent method and that all the tested samples
showed the presence of formalin when the colourless Schiff’s reagent turned
dark pink to purple colour when added to samples. The darker the colour, the
more the concentration of formalin, and this is what the test showed. To be
further sure, crushed ice from the local market was tested and this showed
negative with no colour change.
This report was available and the
government and the FDA deliberately turned a blind eye to it. In fact it was
because of this report that showed the presence of formalin, that a second test
was ordered. Why? Will somebody in government answer as to why fish that had
tested positive for formalin in the spot test was allowed to be sold later the
same day? Who, or whose interests, were being protected here? We have a
government that willfully played around with the people’s health, a government
that waited till they got a more palatable report from its lab that ‘cleared’
the fish.
The same government has now decided to
stop the daily testing of fish for formalin, but only have surprise checks
instead. In fact the announcement that the daily testing of fish would be
stopped and only surprise checks undertaken was made on the same day that the
first test report was revealed under RTI. With the new knowledge that is now
available, this now is not a very acceptable change in procedure. The tests
should continue, and if the FDA is short staffed, then more technicians can be
drafted to undertake the task. There is no plausible reason to stop the daily
tests.
The trust factor between the government
and the people has been irreversibly broken as politics definitely played a big
role in covering up the formalin in fish issue. If it didn’t, then will the FDA
Director explain why she ordered the FDA Designated Officer to send the portion
of the samples to the laboratory and to refrain from sealing the vehicles? And
why was this done from the phone belonging to one M Ibrahim who is the
president of the Wholesale Fish Market Association? The questions that can be
posed would be endless, but getting answers will be as difficult as getting the
government to admit that there indeed was formalin in fish.
It is now two months since the formalin
in fish issue first broke out. And even 60 days later it has not been put to
rest. New revelations only further confuse the issue. The documents accessed
under RTI now call for a police investigation of the entire episode, with no
one left out from being probed. The State government should answer to the
people as to what exactly transpired that day and why was the fish that had
first tested positive for formalin allowed to be sold.