At a time when 418 of the 753 bars in the State remain closed after the Comptroller and AuditorGeneral (CAG) found that they were not having the minimum cleanliness standard, data on the standard of hygiene followed by hotels in the State have come as a shocker.
The data was collected by filing a Right To Information (RTI) application to the State Food Safety Commissioner’s Office.
The application was filed in February last year to know about the 30 guidelines on food safety, to be followed by the hotels in the State under the Food Safety and Standards Act - 2011. The application was filed in the wake of the death of a person on July 10, 2012, after eating‘shavarma’ from a hotel in Thiruvananthapuram.
The then Joint Food Safety Commissioner K Anil Kumar, who is now the Food Safety Commissioner in-charge, forwarded the RTI application, filed by human rights activist P B Satheesh of Mannuthy in Thrissur, to the assistant commissioners (food safety) who are in charge of checking food safety in each of the 14 districts and ensuring that the guidelines are followed.
The consolidated district-wise data received so far by the applicant from the assistant commissioners in seven districts and from the food inspectors of various circles in the other districts clearly show that not even one per cent of the hotels in the State, registered as per the government rules, are following the 30-point guidelines, instructed through a circular on July 25, 2012 by the then Food and Safety Commissioner Biju Prabhakar.
“I got the district-wise data through the assistant food safety commissioners of seven districts, while the rest of the data came from the food inspectors looking after each circle (tantamount to an Assembly constituency in the State). As per the data I received through the RTI reply, the total number of registered hotels in the State is 1,85,390, of which only 1,461 are following the 30-point guidelines. This is only 0.79 per cent of the total registered hotels” Satheesh said. The 30-point guidelines mainly give instructions regarding the distance between the drainage andtoilets and the kitchen of the hotels, drainage water getting logged near the kitchen, cleanliness of the kitchen, and proper freezing facilities to preserve raw food items etc.
Official Version
K Anil Kumar, the State Food Safety Commissioner in-charge, told ‘Express’ that it was a laborious task to implement the Central Government’s Food Safety and Standards (FSS) Act-2011.
According to him, the data consolidated through the RTI application might be for only those hotels where the food safety officers conducted inspection.
“Besides that, the Central Government has extended the deadline for hotels and restaurants to get licence by complying with the FSS Act until August 2014. Moreover, there is a possibility of the new government that comes to power at the centre extending the deadline further,” he said.
“But, compared to some of the other states in the country, like Tamil Nadu, the food safety officials in Kerala have taken a far better effort to implement the Act,” he claimed. On the 30-point guidelines, he said that he was not sure about the need for such a circular, while the Act itself was getting implemented.
B Satheesh, who filed the RTI application, said that even around three years after the Act was implemented, the government was still waiting for another person to die for strictly implementing the rules. “Even the district-wise data I received from seven assistant commissioners of food safety clearly show that only nine per cent of the hotels, in half of the districts in the State, have got the licence as per the FSS Act- 2011,” he said.
‘ready to implement the FSS Act’
Kerala Hotel and Restaurant Association general secretary Jose Mohan said they have rejected the 30-point guidelines. “We are ready to implement the FSS Act - 2011. We have moved the High Court for changing some of the provision in the Act. We have asked all the 1.25 lakh members of our association to implement the Act, except some non-viable provisions in it. We will give membership to those having either FSSA licence or the licence given by the civic bodies concerned,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment