Food authority to ensure provision of ‘safe food’ for students

K-P education dept directs school officials to discourage use of tobacco, narcotics

PESHAWAR: Weeks after the province’s first dedicated food authority started working, it has received its first major task: devise standards and to ensure their implementation so that quality food can be provided to students, whether in or outside schools.

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Elementary and Secondary Education Department on Thursday directed the K-P Food Safety and Halal Food Authority to issue Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for traders and hawkers providing foodstuff and to ensure that these standards are implemented.

According to the notification issued by the Directorate of Elementary and Secondary Education, there are more than 28,000 government-run schools across the province where over four million students study. Apart from the imparting quality education to students, the department said it was also trying to provide a hygienic environment for students.



The notification highlighted that various bakeries, shopkeepers, hawkers and vendors located in the immediate vicinity of schools sell poor quality and substandard food items. These, the department said, often results in outbreaks of mortal diseases.

The department asked the food safety authority to issue SOPs for such traders and hawkers to ensure the provision of standard food for the best health of students.

Moreover, Elementary and Secondary Education Director Farid Ahmad Khattak directed principals, headmasters, headmistresses and all teachers to discourage the use of tobacco in any form or any narcotics in educational institutes.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 16^th, 2018.