PESHAWAR: The Monitoring and Evaluation Department of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Food Safety and Halal Food Authority on Sunday released a report, declaring canteens in different universities’ campuses unhygienic and unsafe.
Besides stressing the need for the provision of hygienic and safe edibles, the report suggested that more filtration plants should be installed inside the educational institutes and the existing ones be repaired to ensure supply of clean drinking water to the students and other visitors.
The report revealed that the Peshawar Division teams with a mandate to ensure food safety, food hygiene and food standards, responded to online public complaints.
They raided almost all canteens in both the government and private sector universities in Peshawar.
“Fifteen universities and several other educational institutes were visited where more than 78 canteens on campuses were checked for food quality, premises and personal hygiene” report read.
It said all canteens were issued improvement notices; some were fined on the low-moderate level of food standards violation while others were sealed due to major issues identified.
Commenting on the report, KP Food Authority Director General Riaz Khan Mahsud said that four university campuses and several other colleges inside the campus of the University of Peshawar were more vulnerable and students left with no option but to take unsafe and unhygienic food.
The DG added that the quarters concerned would be informed about the alarming situations of their respective canteens. He said stern action would be taken if they failed to improve the situation.
Riaz Khan Mahsud directed Director (Operations) Khalid Khattak to take up the matter with the relevant institutes and let them know about the worst situation of their canteens.
Khalid Khattak deputed a special team led by Assistant Director Dr Murad Ali for food surveillance of the campus. The director operations said that over 600 complaints had been received from educational institutes out of which 300 were traced and addressed at different canteens in the campus.
Giving details of the report, the official said that no food safety and personal hygiene measures were observed at the campus canteens.
He said that not even a single member of the staff was being screened medically who may be a carrier of a communicable disease.
The report identified unhygienic water tanks, non-availability/non-operational water filter, poor infrastructure condition of the premises, unhygienic conditions in canteens/mess, availability of banned food items i.e. nonfood grade colours inside kitchens, availability of substandard and expired food items, poor personal hygiene of the food handlers, provision of substandard food to costumes, unavailability of medical fitness certificates of the workers as the key issues. The report appreciated the canteens of the Khyber Medical College for improvement in cleanliness and food standard.
The report suggested some recommendations to cope with the alarming situation of the canteens.
All educational institutes were directed to constitute food inspection committees for regular checkup, award canteen contracts to contractors, who are aware of the food safety standards and they must be bound to follow SOPs of KP-FSA.
The educational institutes were also directed to improve infrastructure, where ever needed, as most of the contractors complain that institute administration did not allow them for any kind of infrastructure/civil work in canteens.
Besides it, Level-1 food safety training conducted by KP-FSA for food handlers and installation of water filters and maintenance of the record of filter replacement after every three months to be made mandatory.
Awareness sessions about food safety and hygiene will be conducted by teams of KP FSA from time to time.
