------------------------------------------------------------------ Do GOACAN a favour, circulate this email to your family members, relatives, neighbours and friends. Help others be BETTER INFORMED, The time is come for the people of Goa to ORGANISE not AGONISE !! ----------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------- Antiseptic Parlours ------------------------- The Corporation of City of Panaji has come out with a preferred code of practice for hotels and restaurants. The code is a list of measures that the eating establishments in the city are asked to follow. The option is dire. Follow or close down.
It is not that the city's municipal authorities did not know anything about the need for these measures in the past. A sort of code has always existed: in the days of jaundice and other water-borne diseases it has been reinvented. We only wish the it does not remain a transient concern. It should not come and go as a tide. It is not enough to lay down guidelines.
The conditions are tough and there is every likelihood that the eating establishments will try their best not to implement all of them scrupulously. Most probably they will hope that the public concern over the outbreak of malaria and jaundice fades away soon and the municipal administration goes back to its slack and sluggish mode.
The code wants the establishments, for instance, to check if their workers have long nails, if they wash their hands properly; it asks them not to make workers suffering from infectious and other diseases work; it asks them not to store vegetables on the floor, and so on and so forth.
Now anyone who is familiar with the average Indian habits of hygiene he will know that washing hands is not considered important and nor is whether nails are cut every few days; and there will be very few who will find storing of vegetables on the floor dangerous.
There is no disputing the fact that dirty hands, long nails and vegetables on floor can bring in diseases. But the point is the eating establishments are affected by the same lack of care and concern for cleanliness and hygiene as average Indians. The culture pervades the owners, workers as well as customers.
People are no less to be blamed for accepting harmful conditions as a way of life. You can see young and old people queuing up to take panipuri and bhelpuri from gadas on plates that are dipped into a single bucket and taken out and served out from one customer to another. People consider it a good outing. Who to blame?
A part of the guilt for the illnesses caused to the customers who allegedly got it from eateries in the city should be shared by the victims themselves. They invited the trouble for themselves.
But the culture which allows a huge space to tolerance of uncleanliness and lack of hygiene in restaurants is not the only thing that is going to come in the way of the eating establishments transforming themselves into antiseptic parlours. There will be costs too. Eatery is above all a business. And in business the costs must be kept the bare minimum to earn profits.
The code laid down by the corporation will require fresh investments by the eating establishments. The question that needs to be asked is: can they afford to make the required investments in order to make their kitchens, storage, restaurant and washing places totally hostile to disease-carrying insects and worms?
A supplementary question will be: can they make these investments without raising the prices in their menu? Another question: will not higher prices reduce their clientele?
However, these are all their problems, the problems of the establishments. If they want to do business without spreading diseases they have to take the measures that are needed to make their places clean. There cannot be any compromise on that.
The customers need to raise awareness among themselves not to patronise restaurants that do not stick to the rules of hygiene and cleanliness. However, the biggest responsibility is upon the angels in the municipal administration who have declared the restaurants unclean and dangerous. They have to take care of the customers for whom they speak and swear to work.
Laying down a long list of precautions to the eating establishments is one thing and making them follow them scrupulously is another. The responsibility for the administrators is not over with the publicity of the code. It actually begins here.
The very fact that diseases were contracted from the materials consumed in the restaurants goes to show that the municipal administrators were asleep. The guilt for the outbreak of jaundice and malaria must be shared equally by the restaurant owners, customers and municipal administrators.
The administrators have to transform themselves along with the restaurant owners and customers. Their monitors and inspectors must religiously create ideally clean restaurants in the city. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editorial in The Navhind Times 10/9/03 page 10 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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