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Thursday March 28, 2024

Makeshift eateries a threat to public health

LAHOREA very large majority of citizens who eat from roadside or makeshift vendors are unaware of the fact that they may catch a contagious or infectious disease(s) from the person cooking, preparing, handling or serving the food because the Punjab Food Authority (PFA) has “exempted” small vendors from blood screening

By Ali Raza
March 26, 2015
LAHORE
A very large majority of citizens who eat from roadside or makeshift vendors are unaware of the fact that they may catch a contagious or infectious disease(s) from the person cooking, preparing, handling or serving the food because the Punjab Food Authority (PFA) has “exempted” small vendors from blood screening rules.
Sources said the PFA has not asked any of the street vendors, small hotels, restaurants and other food supply businesses operating in the city to submit health certificates of their cooks, servers and food handlers. This simply means that anyone eating from these outlets is facing a serious health risk.
According to the rules of the PFA, any person handling food in any hotel, restaurant, sweetmeat shop or any other public eating place is required to provide a health certificate to the authority but in this case the authority did not exercise its authority.
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, eyes test, chest x-rays, typhoid test and TB test.
It is shocking to know that majority of food handlers, including servers, waiters, cooks, kitchen assistants and delivery persons, working in small hotels, roadside food spots, tandoors, etc have not screened themselves and are working without any fear of being caught for this grave violation. The situation is same at the small food manufacturing units.
The sources claimed that it is very hard to count the exact number of roadside stalls and food spots because they increase or decrease every day. Anyone can start a food business anywhere in the city and it only need a little investment and will.
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 of CDGL came 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. Most of these food carriers belonged to big and modern hotels. After that the CDGL linked issuance of business license with submission of medical reports of the employees of hotels and other food-related companies.
It is pertinent to mention here that thousands of small food stalls, hotels, restaurants, juice corners, fruit chat, Dahi Bhallay stalls, ice cream parlors, etc are operative in the city and a very large number of people daily visit these food outlets. The interest of the PFA can be gauged from the fact that even an awareness drive to educate the general public from the hazardous impacts of eating from such spots was not launched. The authority is only focusing on big business over this issue.
A new addition to this category is establishment of outlets selling ‘treated’ water in almost every city locality. In past the PFA launched a move to register these water filtration plants but failed and many plants went into courts and challenged the jurisdiction of the Authority.
When contacted, PFA’s spokesperson admitted that the authority has so far failed to enforce blood screening rules on this category of food manufacturers, sellers, handlers and etc. She, however, said that the authority is vigorously working to streamline the business of street food vendors. She said two areas are being identified in every town for all street vendors. “No one can sell any food related item in that town other than the specified area,” she said adding that after this the authority will enforce all the rules and regulations.