BSS-30 Licenses of restaurants without quality food to be cancelled: Shadan

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BSS-30

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Licenses of restaurants without quality food to be cancelled: Shadan

DHAKA, Jan 20, 2019 (BSS)- As a stricter move to ensure food hygiene in the city’s food courts, the government would go for cancelling the licenses of the hotels and restaurants if the food courts fail to maintain quality within the stipulated time.

Following the government’s such stance on ensuring food quality for the consumers, Food Minister Shadan Chandra Majumder today asked the city’s hotel and restaurant owners to maintain food quality in their restaurants.

“You [hotel and restaurant owners] have to maintain the food quality…otherwise they have to face punitive actions within the stipulated time,” the food minister said this while inaugurating the launching of grading system for different hotels and restaurants in the city held at Fars Hotel in city’s Bijoynagar area here this morning.

Under the grading system, the government has taken an initiative to enlist all the hotels and restaurants in the capital under four categories– A+(plus), A, B and C– considering its food quality, purity, environment and decoration of a particular hotel or restaurant.

“The government will cancel the license of all the c-category hotels and restaurants if these orange coloured stickers-marked restaurants fail to improve their food quality and environment within a month,” said the minister quoting the food safety act.

“It is impossible on the part of the ministry of food alone to ensure food safety,” the food minister told the function. So, the food minster urged all including the agriculture and health and family welfare ministries to come forward to ensure the food safety for the people.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh Food Safety Authority (BFSA), a national food safety regulatory body, has taken primarily a pilot project to identify safe and unsafe food producing hotels and restaurants located in city’s Mothijheel, Dilkhusa, Paltan and Secretariat areas marking those establishments with grade and coloured stickers.

A consumer can easily identify a good quality hotel or restaurant in the city when he will see the green coloured sticker or A+ mark on the hotel, he said. At the same time, the consumer will be able to identify the unsafe food producing hotels and restaurants with yellow coloured stickers or c-grade.

In addition to this, the BFSA also will identify the restaurants with A and B category restaurants by identifying them with blue and yellow coloured stickers respectively as the food quality of these two categories hotels is good and average.

Earlier, BFSA inaugurated the programme by providing stickers to ‘Kosturi’ hotel on April 2, 2018.

In future, the government will bring all the hotels and restaurants across the country under the grading system, said Mohammad Mahfuzul Haq, Chairman of Bangladesh Food Safety Authority.

With Food Secretary Shahabuddin Ahmed in the chair, the meeting also was attended, among others, by Dhaka South City Corporation Mayor Sayeed Khokon, Former Food Minister Advocate Qamrul Islam, Bangladesh Restaurants Owners Association Secretary General Rezaul Karim Sarker and officials and representatives of the ministry.

BSS/AsG/OG/KU/1930 HRS