The Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s food safety drive in Golpark has found poor hygiene, inadequate food storage and other irregularities at several eateries, including a sweet manufacturing unit, as civic authorities expand inspections across the city.
KMC health officials checked more than 14 restaurants and eateries in south Kolkata on Thursday, along with a sweet shop and its manufacturing unit, according to a civic official quoted by Telegraph India. The official said the manufacturing unit was in “very poor condition” in terms of cleanliness.
The inspections covered establishments selling kebabs, chowmein, momos and different varieties of mishti, including firni. Civic teams found that staff at some establishments could not produce purchase receipts for certain raw materials. Date tags were missing from several refrigerated food items, while a bird’s feather was found in a packet of namkeen at a sweet shop, the report said.
Some food items that were not stored according to safety norms were discarded during the checks. Owners were also instructed to follow the prescribed guidelines for food storage, the civic official said.
Samples collected during the inspections will be sent to testing laboratories for a final report on possible contamination. The KMC will decide whether to issue a closure notice to the sweet manufacturing unit after a meeting, the official said. The report did not specify the names of the establishments inspected or the quantity of food discarded during the Golpark operation.
The latest drive began a day after the commissioner of food safety in the state health department instructed KMC health officials to conduct zone-specific raids across Kolkata. The directive asked civic teams to continue inspections across establishments of all sizes, including those located on major thoroughfares as well as in lanes and bylanes.
The current exercise follows an earlier week-long KMC drive conducted from September 1 to 7. During that operation, civic health officials visited 592 establishments, collected 161 food samples and discarded 1,224kg of food that did not meet safety norms, according to the report.
The earlier inspections covered hotels, clubs, restaurants, markets and bazaars. KMC commissioner Smita Pandey said the drive was intended to make the food industry more responsible and accountable to Kolkata’s residents, while covering establishments across different segments of the city’s food supply chain.
Unlike the earlier citywide exercise, the latest inspections are being organised around specific zones. Health department sources said civic officials have been asked to divide Kolkata into zones and check food establishments systematically, including those operating in smaller lanes and bylanes.
The laboratory reports from the samples collected in Golpark and the KMC meeting on possible action against the sweet manufacturing unit are the next official steps in the process.
