Angul: Come rainy season, residents of this industrial town become a worried lot about having food at roadside eateries that are mushrooming across the town. Since most of these joints operate without a registration, the quality of the food at these kiosks are hardly inspected.
These roadside kiosks and push carts can be seen mushrooming this year. Locals allege that more than a thousand such joints have come up near market places.
Always abuzz with customers, they churn out various types of dishes while giving little attention to the quality of the food, serving plates and hygiene. A large part of these vendors are known to make compromises on quality knowingly. Besides, the quality of ingredients used to prepare the food items are also of low quality, customers in the past have pointed out repeatedly on many occasions. .
There are also vendors who process stale stuff and sell them to unsuspecting customers. At places, these vendors can be seen using water pilfering from the pipelines going near drains. Low quality food and water collected from unhygienic sources have compounded the risk of the customers suffering from various diseases, they alleged.
Denizens have brought this issue to the notice of the Public Health department but to no avail. No action has been taken on their complaint, locals said.
It is mandatory to get a license from the Public Health department to start any food related business in this town. But there are many such businessmen that are flouting the norm with impunity. And the Public Health department remaining toothless has encouraged other such businessmen to open their food stalls.
Surprisingly enough, the department is clueless about the numbers of eateries in the town, their registration status, and the number of times inspection has been carried out.
When contacted, food inspector Harapriya Behera pleaded ignorance over the matter and said, “I had been on maternity leave. Keonjhar food inspector was in charge of Angul in my absence. I will have to go though the record to figure out what he has done. To my knowledge, some of the eateries have registered themselves with the department,” she said.
Whenever we get any complaint regarding the quality of the food, we promptly take action against them by investigating into it. In the coming days, an awareness drive would be created, asking these eatery owners to maintain quality of their food items and the hygienic of their surroundings.
Additional district medical officer (ADMO) Rakesh Sahu said, “About 1000 eateries have been registered. However, regular raids are not possible as we do not have a food inspector.”
PNN