CMC flexes its muscle to improve eateries in Colombo

By Ranil WIJAYAPALA

Keeping the standards of the food supplied to Colombo city and the hygiene level of the food stuff sold in Colombo city is also vital in equal terms to the efforts made by the authorities to keep the city clean outwardly.

There is no point in keeping city outwordly clean if people get affected by food poisoning and other diseases due to spoilt food stuff sold in markets, eateries, hotels and restaurants in the city.

Therefore, keeping a close eye on these places is a must for the authorities if people are to be more concerned about the reputation of Colombo city, the commercial city that attracts the most number of people, locals and foreigners, on a daily basis.

It was with that responsibility, that the Public Health Department of the Colombo Municipal Council conducted a number of raids during the past few months to see whether the food available in the city was upto standard for consumption by the public.

According to Dr. Pradeep Kariyawasam, the Chief Medical Officer of the Colombo Municipal Council, his officials have destroyed 48,000 tonnes of spoilt potatoes,10,000 apples and around 5,000 oranges after inspecting warehouses in Colombo city.

But there were different versions to these raids as some traders in Pettah said that the raids were conducted when they keeping these spoilt stocks of potatoes to be taken to dumping sites by the CMC.

However Dr. Kariyawasam refuted these allegations saying that if the traders wanted to dump these spoilt stocks they have to put a sticker and keep them separately for the CMC to take them away. “But they did not do that. They keep them at their warehouses and sell them at half rate. We have found such spoilt stocks even at leading hotels in Colombo”, Dr. Kariyawasam said.

The Food Inspectors and the Public Health Inspectors inspected warehouses at 4th and 5th Cross Street, Maliban Street and Old Moor Street in Pettah and altogether they found about 48,000 tonnes of spoilt potatoes. A warehouse in Kotahena was also raided and about 10,000 apples and 5,000 oranges were destroyed.

“What these traders say is that they import these potatoes from countries like Pakistan after sending them a fax and a bank guarantee. They find the food stuff spoilt only when they open the containers after they are released by the Customs.

However, Customs officials say that the stocks were not spoilt when they release them to the traders. So we need a mechanism to issue a quality certificate when importing them”, Dr. Kariyawasam said.

“We don’t know who is telling the truth. But we have to stop them selling the stuff and we issued them a red notice saying that if we find anymore spoilt stocks we will take them to Court,” Dr. Kariyawasam said

However, he said representatives of the Traders Association and officials of the CMC along with the Mayor will meet on January 28 to discuss the issue of dumping spoilt food stuff as people used take away some of the food stuff from the dumping site.

“We have also decided to deploy at least four PHIs when we dump these spoilt food stuff to ensure that they will not be taken away,” Dr. Kariyawasam said.

He said that they found much of the fruits imported to the country were spoilt. People pay a lot of money for fruits but only when they take them home and cut the fruit do they know that the fruits they bought were spoilt.

A lot of grapes come covered with fungus because they do not have refrigerators to store them. Even the refrigerators that they have, are never clean. The fungus spreads when they take them out. These are the issues”, he said.

When it comes to meat and fish the CMC Food Inspectors have found that the meat samples they checked were contaminated with salmonella e-coli. “This is because the meat brought to Colombo city are transported from other areas such as Anuradhapura and Vavuniya.

If the cattle is killed today the meat comes on the following day. They do not have refrigerated vehicles to transport the meat.

They put a layer of ice into the lorry and they put meat on top of it and again they put ice on the meat. By the time it comes to Colombo all the ice is gone. So the meat gets spoilt soon. That may be one of the reasons why we find beef curries spoilt when we check them. The other reason is that spices are also contaminated”, he said.

“I think the Government is aware of this situation and we must insist on refrigerated vehicles for the transport of meat and not in lorries under the hot sun,” he said.

Apart from that the CMC officials also found that the fresh milk sold in Colombo is sometimes spoilt.

“The way people collect the milk is also a contributing factor for this situation.

Though people want to sell the milk they do not care about the hygiene level. They don’t wash their hands using soap before milking and they do not wash the pail in which they collect milk.

When microbes get into the milk, the number of microbes increase every minute. When it reaches a certain number the milk is not suitable for consumption.

That is the limit we have it for food poisoning”. he said.

Now most of them are pasteurising the milk they sell. Due to this, the standard of ice cream has also improved as the spoilt milk is not being used to make ice cream.

“Earlier we conducted a survey on leading brands of ice cream and we found that the best firm had only 66 per cent of their ice cream fit for consumption and the worst one had zero. So we got them to send us samples for investigation. One reason was the contaminated milk. Now the ice cream is ok,” he said.

Another reason for the contamination of ice cream in most of the leading super market is because they switch off the refrigerators at night and the food gets spoilt.

“You have to keep meat and ice cream under minus 18 degrees centigrade. When they switch off refrigerators they are almost at zero level and ice cream melts and breaks into layers. A lot of people complained about this tasteless ice cream and only then we did realize that something was happening.

Now of course people are keeping the freezers on because they realised that situation”, he said.

Keeping a check on the food outlets in public places is also must and the Food Inspectors and Public Health Inspectors also inspected the food outlets at the Galle Face green recently.

“At Galle Face we conducted some raids a few years ago and last year we trained the people and issued them identity cards and uniforms. After one year we find that the hygiene level has improved by at least 50 per cent but there is much room for improvement,” Dr. Kariyawasam said.

“We found a lot of old godamba rotty and parata sometimes under the racks. That we cannot accept because all the dust gets into them and we confiscated 400 to 500 eggs which were not washed,” he said.

“Water is a big problem there and authorities should provide enough water supplies to them. And also I think we must go for a standard structure for all these people. There should be uniformity,” he said.

“I noticed that tourists coming there are not buying anything from these outlets. Our idea was to cater to the tourists. So when we are having tourist hotels around Galle Face we must improve the outlets hygienically so that tourists also could buy food without any fear”, he said.

He said there were about 1,000 food outlets in the city but the CMC had issued licences only for about 400 because only they have the capacity. The others don’t have the capacity. Sometimes they are not interested in improving the places. “From this year we will register all the workers at food outlets in Colombo city. If there is a worker who has not registered with us we can take him to Court. Under the by-laws of the CMC all of them should be registered.

Once they register with us we can give them identity cards. We will at least give a list of names and then we can certify that these people are registered with the institute and they have to display that in the premises.

“The city and the country is developing and the hotel industry should also be developed. Not only hotels, but eateries, and everything else should be developed.

If we are expecting tourists to come in their millions we have to have places to cater to their needs.

A lot of tourists end up with food poisoning and we should put and end to this situation by improving the condition of these places”, Dr. Kariyawasam said.