THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The food business operators including hotels and restaurants are getting away with supply of stale food and unsafe food because of the authorities emphasis on corrective measures rather than enforcing stringent action.
According to officials, there are directions from the Central Government that emphasis should be on corrective measures rather than enforcing stringent action including cancellation of license. The offenders are given adequate time to take corrective measures. Improvement notices are issued to ensure they make amends.
Once the license is cancelled then it can be revoked only after three months. The Centre is against cancellation of registration and licences as it would adversely affect businesses and the livelihood of workforce. Therefore the emphasis is also on safeguarding the rights of FBOs.
However, many believe that constant monitoring is needed to check sale of contaminated and stale food in restaurants. While the recent raids carried out by food safety and other departments on hotels and restaurants were welcomed widely, customers are in favour of stringent follow-up action to keep the hotels under tight leash.
With more and more people now preferring to eat out, the responsibility of law enforcing agencies have increased manifold. Effective coordination between food safety, health and corporation is needed to rein in hotels which are regularly violating norms.
It may be recalled that the special squad of city corporation had seized large quantity of stale food from small, medium and three-star hotels in Capital during the raids conducted on Thursday. Improvement notices to 47 eateries for selling unsafe food to the customers.
The food safety officials say they would step up monitoring besides holding more awareness programmes for food business operators and their staff. They hope the Food Safety Training and Certification (FoSTac) programme launched recently wold make some difference on the ground. Under the programme each FBO with 25 or more staff would have one trained supervisor. He would be the point person to train other staff members.
The training related to food handling and associated responsibilities would be imparted on payment.
The officials plan to hold extensive awareness programmes for the food operators to check the sale of unsafe, stale and contaminated food. With strict monitoring and better coordination with other agencies, they hope to rein in the offenders.
