the goan I network
PANAJI
The Director of the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) Jyoti Sardessai and the Health Secretary J Ashok Kumar, on Tuesday asked the Goa Human Rights Commission (GHRC) permission to cross examine FDA designated officer Iva Fernandes with regards to the allegations of harassment filed by her with the Commission.
In a surrejoinder filed with the Commission through their advocate, the respondents (Sardessai and Ashok Kumar) have asked to cross-examine the complainant (Fernandes) through their lawyer Adv GD Kirtany.
They have also denied Fernandes’ several counts of harassment and said that Iva has not produced any evidence to substantiate her allegations of harassment by Sardessai after the formalin-in-fish controversy broke out last July.
Fernandes’ lawyer, Adv Aires Rodrigues asked for more time to argue the case, since the surrejoinder was filed on the day the hearing was to take place.
As such, a hearing in the matter has been fixed for
March 13.
Fernandes, in her complaint to the GHRC filed some months back, claimed that the Director of the FDA had kept her out of administrative decisions and all meetings held by her with food safety enforcement staff from July 12 onwards.
She said that this was not in keeping with the Food Safety and Standard Act 2006, which states that a designated officer’s duty was administrative in nature and she was in-charge of Food Safety of the District.
According to this Act, Fernandes said that the Commissioner of Food could not allot duties of a lower post, nor could she allot duties other than that of the functions of Designated Officer.
Fernandes also claimed other forms of harassment like denial of leave from September 10 to 12 under the Leave Travel Concession (LTC), though she had applied a month in
advance.
She had stated that she suffered a loss of over Rs 34,000, and that this denial of leave was discriminatory because all other applications for LTC received by gazetted officers were cleared.
