THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Public health is going for a toss as eateries violate even basic food safety norms. The government has launched drives and campaigns to promote safe food but when it comes to enforcement, the food safety wing — which is crippled by staff crunch — has proved to be a failure.
A large section of small and medium eateries in the district doesn’t follow even basic hygiene putting the life of the people at risk.
Food handlers at the eateries don’t have medical fitness certificates or maintain personal hygiene.
As per rules workers should use clean aprons, gloves and head wears and the food handlers should keep their finger nails trimmed. However, none of these are being followed by the eateries here.
There are around 5,000 hotels in the district and approximately 50,000 employees are earning a living from hotel business.
The majority of the food handlers are migrants and as per norms every employee at the eatery should have a health card. However, a large section of the workers at the hotels does not have health cards.
Commissioner of food safety T.V. Anupama expressed helplessness on the matter. Currently, there are around 155 vacancies at the commissionerate.
“We are understaffed and it’s impossible for us to keep a tab on the migrant workers in hotels. We are in the process of issuing licence and registration for food business operators. Health cards are mandatory for availing of licence and around 60,000 hoteliers have taken licence in the state,” said Anupama.
The Commissionerate is conducting training programmes for food business operators. “We finished around 40 out of 70 training classes on food safety for food business operators. Training classes alone won’t help and once we fill the vacancies we would be able to keep track of things better,” said Anupama.
Kerala Hotel and Restaurants Association district secretary B. Vijayakumar said that only financially sound food business operators would be able to follow the food safety rules.
“There are around 2,000 eateries in the unorganised sector and they don’t come under our association. We have a hygiene committee under the association to rectify flaws,” said Vijayakumar.
