The ASAE Employees Union Association (ASF) drew attention this Tuesday to the situation in the organization derived from the divestment, budget constraints and the lack of a strategy by the Inspector General.
In a statement and on the occasion of Food Safety Day, the Association of Employees of the Economic and Food Safety Authority (ASF-ASAE) highlighted the difficulties of ASAE, which “compromises the fulfillment of its mission”, and stressed that the agency has been losing response capacity due to lack of strategy of the current inspector generalPedro Gaspar Portugal.
According to the Association, the inspector general has led the “body to wither, beginning his mandate in 2013 with the extinction of the areas of specialization that include the area of Food Safety, at the time made up of a group of collaborators – inspectors and technicians of support to the personnel – who invested for years in their training and who were forced to carry out inspection actions in matters as diverse as the inspection of playgrounds or even tires or toys”.
The ASF also highlighted the existence of a “divestment in the training areawitnessing a decrease in training actions, both in number and quality, there were years in which it was practically non-existent for some employees, continuing to increase the number of subjects to tutor scattered in some 1,200 legal degrees.
The Association also considered that the ASAE Food Safety Laboratory, made up of specialized employees, has been lose execution capacity due to lack of economic means.
“It is incomprehensible and highly detrimental to the fulfillment of ASAE’s Mission that, due to the lack of reagents, culture media and other basic consumables in any scientific laboratory, it cannot be a technical asset for ASAE, which increasingly resorts to frequency to private companies. laboratories”, stressed the ASF-ASAE.
According to the ASF, there is a “clear under-budgeting in ASAE that, over nine years, the Inspector General, Pedro Portugal Gaspar, has not been able to invest, going from budgets of around 30 million euros in the first years of existence of ASAE to lower budgets.” to 20 million eurosEuro”.
For the Association, these budgets have “direct repercussions in the drastic reduction of its annual Training Plan, in the reduction of resources for the operation of laboratories and inspection or investigation actions and also in the reduction of the basic resources necessary for its activity, with reduction/degradation of parking , computer resources or facility maintenance”.
The ASF demonstrates concern about food poisoning situationsin schools, nurseries and residences for the elderly, due to the difficulty of monitoring and the rapid response of ASAE.
“On the day that Food Safety Day is celebrated, it is expected that the ASAE management, through its highest representative, Inspector General Pedro Portugal Gaspar, will take the opportunity to transfer the true decadent reality in which the Organization, reversing the path that led to this decline of ASAE and specifically in terms of Food Safety”, emphasizes the ASF.
The Association also calls for a serious and urgent reinforcement of ASAE in its staff, duly trained and specialized, “with adequate resources that allow a public service of excellence”.
Source: Observadora
