ISSN: 1391 - 0531
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Vol. 42 - No 02
News  

Hotels to be graded on their hygiene

By Nadia Fazlulhaq

All hotels including five star hotels in Colombo will be graded by the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) on different criteria, mainly hygienic practices, a CMC official said.

“We are hoping to present the grades at a ceremony to be held in August and the hotels will be able to display the grades. We will also make sure that the public are informed of the grades of these hotels,” CMC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Pradeep Kariyawasam said.

He said there will be a competition between 40 food outlets to brand the best food outlets as a part of encouraging food outlets to adopt better hygienic practices and clean food preparation.

The hotels will be graded based on the WHO recommendations and the Health Ministry’s H800 standards. Kitchens, dining halls, serving sections, toilets, kitchen employees’ and other employees’ personal hygiene, garbage disposal system, food quality and food safety precautions will be taken into consideration for the grading.

The recent raids held in the Pettah by Public Health Inspectors turned out to be successful as they raided 24 places and found hundreds of products which were outdated.

“From the recent raids we found more than 30 packets of biscuits and 80 cakes which were outdated and more than 25 watalappan cups which were fungus infected in addition to many packets of outdated spiced grams. All these were prepared under unhygienic conditions or under poor storage facilities” CMC Chief Food Inspector S.M.Kathriarachchi said.

There are no proper storing facilities and most of the time foods displayed are fungus and bacteria infected as they have absorbed moisture, he said.

 
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Copyright 2007 Wijeya Newspapers Ltd.Colombo. Sri Lanka.