A health officer may, by notice to any person, handling articles of food in any hotel, restaurant, sweetmeat shop, or any other public eating place, requires him to obtain and keep in his possession a health certificate from a health officer to the effect that he is free from communicable disease, and to get it renewed from year to year, till such time as he continues to handle such articles.” Facts are these that a majority of food handlers, including servers, waiters, cooks, kitchen assistants and delivery persons, working in small hotels, roadside food spots, tandoors, etc are not interested in getting a medical fitness certificate.Sources in the Food Department of the City District Government Multan (CDGM) revealed that there were around 4,000 premises in the ancient city of Asia where food-related business, including dining, packing, manufacturing of food items is going on. The sources said the roadside stalls and movable food sellers were other than these 4,000 premises.An officer of CDGM said as per the rules and regulations “A place where employees serve edibles to customers and which has seating arrangements for customers is considered a hotel or a restaurant,” and all the hotel and restaurant employees would be required to obtain ‘health cards’ from the government and display them when they are on duty.Sources said that in case of negligence, the Food department could cancel the licences of a food outlet but so far not a single licence of any big hotel or restaurant was cancelled and the majority of the food handlers in big hotels and restaurants did not display their health cards while working. Sources said blood screening of food handlers and other workers, dealing with food items, was declared compulsory some years back and after the first blood screening, the Sources said the Food department then linked the issuance of licence with submission of medical reports of the employees of hotels and other food-related companies. They were allowed to get the blood screening of their employees from any private laboratory or from a government hospital.
“We have found several fake pathology reports in our record and majority of those were submitted by the staffers of small hotels, restaurants,” said An officer of CDGM 's pure food/ Health department said.He said, earlier, we allowed medical reports of private laboratories but now we would not entertain the report of any private laboratory. He said the government, under the Pure Food Rules 2007, had notified that pathology reports of only government hospitals would be entertained. He said a performa was also made for getting authentic medical tests because it should have been signed by five officers, including an eye specialist, a T&T specialist, a general physician and chief medical examination and medical superintendent of the government hospital.
Over a question that the city was full of thousands of small food stalls, hotels, restaurants, juice corners, fruit chat, Dahi Bhallay stalls, ice cream parlours, etc and a very large number of people daily visited these food outlets, he said the department had launched an awareness campaign in this regard and was already focusing small retailers and other food related business.The department classified the food-related business in three different categories, he said, adding category A included small retailers, roadside hotels and restaurants, roadside food sellers, juice sellers etc, category B included restaurants and hotels in posh localities and big retailers while category C included big hotels, big retailers, food manufacturers, food packing industries, bottled water manufacturers and others.
