Inspector's report shakes Health Dept.

The city's top health official stepped down, a senior health inspector was fired, and two supervisors left their posts yesterday following an inspector general's report describing how a Health Department employee was able to work two jobs simultaneously in Philadelphia and Washington.

Acting Health Commissioner Carmen I. Paris, who took over the department in March 2006, is now deputy health commissioner, with her replacement to be named today, Managing Director Loree Jones said.

Paris' voluntary demotion came in response to a report by Inspector General Seth Williams that "raised serious concerns about employee conduct and managerial supervision," Jones said.

Williams gave Jones a report in August alleging that George J. Zameska, 54, an administrator in charge of food inspections, was allowed to work one day a week in Philadelphia while working full time for the Washington, D.C., health department.

Supervisors allegedly allowed him to work Saturdays over five months, with the other four days taken as vacation time. He left his Washington job in April.

Zameska, a 30-year veteran who made about $87,000, was fired yesterday, Jones said.

Zameska's wife, Diane, said her husband notified the city in November that he planned to retire. He had accrued six months' vacation, and the city didn't put in his retirement right away, she said.

He came back to work on Saturdays as a favor, teaching a food-safety course to day-care workers, she said.

"He did everything that Human Resources told him to," she said. "He did not take one dime from the city that he had not earned faithfully."

The city also accepted the retirement of Zameska's immediate supervisor, environmental health services program director John Rafes, and demoted Rafes' supervisor, assistant commissioner Izzat Melhem, to Rafes' position, Jones said.

Paris, Rafes and Melhem could not be reached last night.