Mumbai,: The Gujarat Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA) recently launched a separate web page called gujhealth.gov.in/fdca in its website. It is specifically dedicated to address complaints from the general public and consumers on any problems or issue they face with regard to food and drugs in the state of Gujarat.

The web page was officially launched on August 19. However the FDCA a week before the launch of the web page had run a trial of the programme to gauge the effectiveness of the same. H G Koshia, commissioner, Food & Drugs Control Administration (FDCA) informed that their team was very impressed by the immediate response that they had received from it.

"Very few had any knowledge of this new addition to our website still we got three to four complains from the consumers in the very first week of its trial. As a part of our commitment to the cause we were successfully able to address these issues within hours of getting informed about the problems," said Koshia.

He further stated that from now on anyone who has any complaints regarding food, drug or other issues relating to any officers or administration etc. they just need to log on to the Gujarat health website and type in the complaint. All the complaints that will be registered will be classified information protecting the identity of the complainant and it will be directed to the joint commissioner or to the administrative officer based on the nature of the complaint.
Koshia said, "This system will enable us to address the queries and problems more promptly without any delay as there is no chance of postponing the matter as it goes directly to the joint commissioners mail. Moreover since everything is computerised there is no fear of the complaint being misplaced as everything can be traced ad tracked from the time it is being reported to the actions that has being taken."

Koshia informed that to bring in more transparency to the whole system they are planning to further upgrade the web page by adding a mechanism which will allow the complainant to track the status of the complaint.

Gujarat FDCA is the first and the only state drug administrative office in the country to have such a unique system that allows the consumers to directly represent their cause to the drug inspectors.

Source: The Indian Express