Seventy-Three brand new HILUX utility vehicles, saloon cars and staff buses are among the latest properties the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has commissioned to enhance operational efficiency in its efforts to rid the nation of falsified and counterfeit medicines, unwholesome food, cosmetics and products.
Director-General of NAFDAC, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, who commissioned the vehicles at the weekend, said the vehicles would put an end to the hitherto practice, whereby clients would bring their vehicles to ferry agency staff to the site for inspection.
According to her, the inspection exercise is already compromised when the staff of a regulatory body would have to depend on their clients to transport them to the factory to be inspected.
Adeyeye in a statement, by the Resident Media Consultant to NAFDAC, Sayo Akintola, explained that the 43 Hilux vans, commissioned at the Investigation and Enforcement Directorate in Apapa, would enhance the enforcement and inspection and the regulatory activities of the agency.
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The DG further explained that the officials of the investigation and enforcement directorate would make use of the utility vehicles to pursue peddlers of contraband, counterfeited products across the nooks and crannies of the country.
’It is not a luxury for us. This is not the end of it. Each state should have at least three Hilux vehicles.’’
Adeyeye also noted that the new vehicles would be useful for the officials of the Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Directorate saddled with the responsibility of inspecting food, water and related products to ascertain their wholesomeness for human consumption with clients scattered all over the country.
‘’About 70 percent of our activities are fieldwork. It is the vehicles that they need. Before I came, companies were sending vehicles to come and inspect them. Who doesn’t know that, that is the end of that inspection in terms of integrity?,” she asked.
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The NAFDAC boss, who recalled that she met a total debt of N3.2 billion when she resumed as DG, said the debt was paid back, barely a year after she took over.
She said she took some excruciating cost-saving measures, which allegedly earned her a lot of funny appellations by the staff.
Elated, Mr. Emmanuel Nwogu, who represented the Director of Administration and Human Resources, Mr. Joseph Aina, said with the provision of the staff buses, no member of the staff has any reason to report late to work without appropriate sanctions.
