John Wilbert & Sarthak Kanjilal
Port Blair, March 15: Six people from two families of Tirur, South Andaman, fell victim of Fish Poisoning after consuming fish nearly three days back. As per reports, both the families bought the fish from same fish vendor.
“We cooked the fish for dinner and after having the fish we all felt uneasy following which we immediately called up the ambulance and went to the Tirur PHC,” said one of the victims.
“By God’s grace we went to the nearby hospital as we developed so much problems that we were later referred to the G B Pant Hospital, Port Blair,” said one victim.
A few days back i.e on 28th Feb also around 50 staffs of various hotels at Havelock became the victim of food poisoning and also alleged that it happened only after having Fish but the concerned authorities like Fisheries and Food Safety maintained that ‘all is well’ and from there side they are doing everything to check the quality of the food supplied to the consumers.
However, when Andaman Sheekha approached the designated Food Safety Officer for a comment and to know whether the fish sample in present case has been examined, he said that there is no lab or Food Sample Analysis in Andaman.
Expressing the helplessness of the Food Safety Unit he said that in Mainland India most of the government run Labs do not accept samples sent from Andaman as they have too much work pressure and reports of private labs are not accepted for legal use.
One wonders if the Food Safety unit can’t check the quality of any food sample then why the unit is functioning on the expense of tax-payers? Does this mean that if tomorrow all fishermen start using dangerous chemicals for preservation of fish like Formalin, the Food Safety unit will be unable to prove that in court? Is this the reason why authorities are refuting all allegations of use of formalin in Andaman? If so then, Islanders are really in deep trouble.
In present case, one of the victims have told Andaman Sheekha that he has kept some sample of the fish in fridge hope the Administration will take some pain to get that sample checked in some Government Labs in Mainland, after all this matter is connected with the well being of all Islanders.
