The food department has come to know that a large number of food carriers including waiters and cooks were suffering from different contagious diseases like hepatitis B and C, TB and typhoid, in Multan and its adjoining areas. Most of these food carriers belonged to big and modern hotels, sources in the CDGM claimed.
Taking notice of the growing number of hepatitis patients in Multan city and adjoining areas, the city district government had taken some preventive measures like blood screening of students, house maids, hotel staff, food stuff sellers, hospital staff. However, these measures could not be implemented since 3 months because Punjab government had frozen the funds of the local councils.
A majority of tea-stalls, cafe, small hotels, restaurants and other food supply businesses in the city have not yet fulfilled the legal requirement of blood screening of their staff, which is spreading contagious diseases among the public.
According to the Pure Food Ordinance 1960, under the law, any person related to food business, including retail shop owners, hotel workers, food manufacturing and packing staffers, should obtain an NOC after submitting their medical tests including hepatitis, complete liver function tests, complete blood culture, skin allergy test, urine test, alcohol test, eye test, chest x-rays, typhoid test and TB test.
A health officer may, by notice to any person handling articles of food in any hotel, restaurant, sweetmeat shop or any other public eating place, requires him to obtain and keep in his possession a health certificate from a health officer to the effect that he is free from communicable disease, and to get it renewed from year to year, till such time as he continues to handle such articles.
The fact is, that majority of food handlers including servers, waiters, cooks, kitchen assistants and delivery persons, working in small hotels, roadside food spots, 'tandoors', etc are not interested in getting a medical fitness certificate.
Sources in the Food Department of CDGM revealed that there were around 4,000 premises in the ancient city of Asia where food-related businesses including dining, packing, manufacturing of food items is going on. The sources said the roadside stalls and movable food sellers were other than these 4,000 premises.
Apprising on the subject, an officer of the CDGM said as per the rules and regulations, a place where employees serve edibles to customers and which has seating arrangements for the customers is considered a hotel or a restaurant, and all the hotel and restaurant employees would be required to obtain health cards from the government and display them when they are on duty.
Sources further said that in case of negligence, the department could cancel the licences of a food outlet but so far, not a single licence of any big hotel or restaurant was cancelled and the majority of the food handlers in big hotels and restaurants did not display their health cards while working.
They informed that the blood screening of food handlers and other workers dealing with food items, was declared compulsory some years back and after the first blood screening, the Food Department then linked the issuance of licence with submission of medical reports of the employees of hotels and other food-related companies. They were allowed to get the blood screening of their employees from any private laboratory or from a government hospital.
"We have found several fake pathology reports in our record and majority of those were submitted by the staffers of small hotels and restaurants," revealed an officer of CDGM Health Department. Earlier, we allowed medical reports of private laboratories but now we would not entertain reports of any private laboratory, he maintained. The government, under the Pure Food Rules 2007, had notified that pathology reports of only government hospitals would be entertained, he added.
He said a performa was also made for getting authentic medical tests because it should have been signed by 5 officers including an eye specialist, a T&T specialist, a general physician and chief medical examination and medical superintendent of the government hospital.
Over a question that the city was full of thousands of small food stalls, hotels, restaurants, juice corners, 'fruit chat', 'dahi baray' stalls, ice cream parlours, etc and a very large number of people daily visited these food outlets, he said the department had launched an awareness campaign in this regard and was already focusing on small retailers and other food related business.
The department classified the food-related business in three different categories, he said, adding category A included small retailers, roadside hotels and restaurants, roadside food sellers, juice sellers etc, category B included restaurants and hotels in posh localities and big retailers while category C included big hotels, big retailers, food manufacturers, food packing industries, bottled water manufacturers and others.
Comments
Comments are closed.