 The sorry state of affairs in health and sanitary administration of Hyderabad has thrown up surprises that there were only 5 health inspectors for 4,000 eateries in city.
With only five food inspectors to monitor the quality of food in almost 4,000 eateries apart from growing number of street-food joints and juice centres, the government had thrown the responsibility of safeguarding the health of the citizens to winds and sheer luck to be free from diseases and contamination. According to a rough estimates there were 27,000 road side eating joints and another 10,000 mobile eat outs in the city.
With summer months round the corner, one can again expect a spate of food poisoning and water contamination cases, mostly due to citizen’s consuming unhygienic food and non-purified water from restaurants and roadside eateries.
As per the new Food Safety and Standards Act, food inspectors are being re-designated as food safety officers (FSO), but still the government is not taking any initiative to fill in the posts and bring new officers.
Due to lack of manpower, the health and sanitation wing of GHMC, which is responsible for inspection of eateries and ice manufacturing units, can’t perform adequate raids and surprise checks in every nook and corner of the city. A GHMC official said, “On an average every week, around 150 eateries from different areas are inspected at random and around 30 food samples are lifted for lab tests.
Cases are booked against eateries and some are closed down for not maintaining quality of food and water, for unsanitary condition of the kitchens.”
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