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| Sunday, 26 January 2003 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Clean up your act or quit - CMOH tells city food outlets by Carol Aloysius Cobwebs slithering along dirty walls; electric wires dangling precariously from the ceiling; oil coated exhaust pipes hung on doors. This may be the ideal setting for a horror film. But for the hundreds of diners, mostly young people, whose favourite `eating out' places are now food courts housed in plush supermarkets, up-market restaurants and star class hotels, dining at any of these places could well turn out to be a nightmare. That is, if they bother to take a peek inside the kitchens that churn out those `mouth watering' meals. So Dr. Pradeep Kariyawasam, Chief Medical Officer of Health, CMC, found out when he recently conducted night raids at two of these plush supermarket restaurants housed in the heart of the city. Seasoned as he is to witnessing unhygienic eating environments he says that the kitchens he saw inside these two restaurants were "a real shocker". "The outward appearance of the food outlets looked so attractive that we were not prepared for the horror scenes we witnessed inside their kitchens. In one of them we found cobwebs hanging from ceilings, garbage pails spilling over with rubbish. The floors were filthy and the tables on which vegetables and meat were being cut were unwashed. There was no evidence of any soap being used at all. The exhaust pipes were strung along doors so that the wires were covered with oil. Inside the kitchen was like being in an oven - the heat was so intense." Peering inside the large deep freezer that stocked up the meats, Dr Kariyawasam had another shock. "Not only was the refrigerator unclean, there were several cooked and uncooked food items stacked one on top of the other, which could have led to food contamination. As for the oil used to fry the food, it was easy to guess that it had not been changed for days." At least one of the Food courts was served marching orders and given one week's grace to quit. "If not we shall be taking them to court", Dr. Kariyawasam says. Similar action will be taken against all other errant restaurants, he warns. Meanwhile, the CMC will continue its night raids, initially targeting the city's up-market restaurants (so that they may serve as an example to the smaller eating houses)." Thereafter we shall be heading for the star class hotels which have also been found guilty of having unhygienic cooking environments in the past", the CMC spokesman said. |
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