Thiruvananthapuram: Six eateries in the city were issued notices by the city corporation after it allegedly seized stale food from them. Officials had raided two restaurants on MG Road at Statue, three on Statue-General Hospital road and another on Manjalikkulam road near Thampanoor.
Three of them are prominent hotels. They have been given a week’s notice to furnish explanations. The team consisting of health officer Dr A. Sasikumar and health superintendents T. Alexander and S. Ajithkumar was conducting routine raids when they came across food stored in the freezer.
They have been observing a sanitation fortnight since October 2. Health inspectors have been conducting raids in their health circles because of recent incidences of various communicable diseases.
The raid started at 7.30 am and ended by 9.30 am, as the officials say it will be difficult to find stale food in the freezers later. Rice, idli, noodles, chicken chops and other cooked food had become frozen blocks and were seized.
Some of the restaurant people had allegedly told corporation officials that it was standard practice to keep half-cooked noodles in the fridge so that customers do not have to be kept waiting.
The officials also claim to have seized ready-to-use masala mix from their freezers. They say the masala mix had a layer of ice above it. The restaurants were also allegedly reusing oil.
The relatively smaller eateries were also accused of unhygienic conditions in which food was prepared. Lack of space in the kitchens was an issue, according to officials. After washing utensils, water would be emptied into the floor next to the cooked food, according to officials.
Erring eateries are back in biz quickly
Mayor V.K. Prasanth told DC that Thiruvananthapuram Corporation will cancel the licence of restaurant owners, in case they are repeat offenders. But, the Corporation, according to sources, despite several raids in the recent past, has not cancelled the licence of even one repeat offender.
An official told DC that some of the health circles had come across eateries which didn’t change even after the raids. “The process to cancel their licence has begun,” the official said.
Restaurants are given a week to offer an explanation, after which the Corporation decides on the amount of penalty to be charged, according to an official. However since no strong action was taken against the restaurants, visitors didn’t even get to know if a restaurant was penalised.
By Thursday evening, the restaurants, where the raids were conducted in the morning, were functioning as if nothing happened there. DC went to two restaurants, which allegedly gave out stale food, but the employees there denied that there was any raid. One even told us that they were going to file a case against the ‘fake’ information being spread against them.
Employee of an eatout at Statue told us that the raids come at least once in two months. In September, Thiruvananthapuram Corporation must have collected '1 lakh as fine from hotels and restaurants, according to officials. But the raids are not that frequent, says Sreekandeswaram Krishnamurthy, who works with Indian National Congress. “It should happen at least once a month, so that the ones who run these can earn a living.”
The people who visit restaurants have developed their own strategies to stay safe. “It is the non-vegetarian food that needs to be avoided, as they can mask the staleness with masala. Also, avoid eating from top restaurants. Five star restaurants take you to five star hospitals,” said S. Gopakumar, a proprietor of a city-based publishing house.
