Food poisoning case

Conclusions cannot be drawn until a complete medico-legal investigation is carried out to ascertain the cause of death of two minor boys in Karachi. Speculations are rampant but it would be irresponsible and premature to place blame on any one particular establishment that the family was patrons of that night, be it the restaurant, amusement park, or candy store. Emphatically, however, we can reason that a complete overhaul of the food authority is necessary. To date, there is no implemented legislation on food quality.

The Sindh Food Authority (SFA) claimed the restaurant under suspicion was served an improvement notice two months ago, but it could not comment extensively on details or follow-up because of a transition phase with the new government. As with any department, laws and procedures need to be canonised so that when departments change hands, its function and effectiveness are not compromised. This is a major learning point. Secondly, cases of substandard edibles being served at restaurants have arisen before but the monitoring of restaurants in the way of regular inspections has never been adopted.

The SFA needs to implement stringent measures and allocate resources towards better management of restaurants. Every eatery, tea stall, and dhaba needs to be registered so that scheduled and random checks can be carried out to ensure restaurant owners are delivering quality. Drastic change is imperative and in the long run will alleviate strain on resources in other areas such as healthcare expenditure. The profiteering, greed, and desperation need to be stopped with warnings and fines on restaurants levied by the book, recorded, and shared with customers. Second chances can hardly be offered when people are willing to risk the lives of customers by employing unhygienic practices and disobeying legislation — information on which, admittedly, is not widely publicised when it should be.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 13^th, 2018.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.