Hygiene remains last priority for Fast Food Vendors in city; No check by Food Safety unit

Staff Correspondent
Port Blair, Mar 31: Don’t you love asking for extra ‘paani’ after gorging on your plate of panipuris? You might also wonder sometimes if the water that’s being used is hygienic or not and if the hands are as clean as expected to be or not but then you let it go because well, panipuri it is!
Have you ever noticed the wet hands of panipuri sellers in Andaman, who never wears gloves as they believe that will dilute the taste of panipuris. The panipuri sellers have tremendous energy level as they cut onions, peel potatoes, clean the table and utensils in no time with their hands and within seconds those hands distribute mouthwatering panipuris to public, and we all love it.
Forget about panipuris, same is the situation with most of the roadside food-stall owners in city.
City is now full of roadside eateries, infact in every area one can find dozens of eating joints run by people, some of whom are suspected to be Bangladeshi intruders.
For these fast food vendors profit is the prime objective while cleanliness and hygiene remain out of their priority list completely.
They wear dirty cloths and serve food with their dirty hands even if they have running nose and other health problems.
Almost all fast food vendors openly defy rules and put public on great risk while customers also seem to be least concerned about proper hygienic conditions. In the absence of any check on them, vendors care little for hygiene.
Public fear that if checked it would be found that 90 per cent of the food supplied by roadside vendors are contaminated with food-borne pathogens. But the million dollar question is who bother about public safety.
The Food Safety unit is presently too busy targeting only Zarda dealers and a few handful businessmen but it is not clear that why no raids are conducted on these food stall owners who play with health of thousands of people everyday.
According to a Times of India report, a panipuri vendor of Ahmedabad has been sentenced to six months imprisonment recently after content of toilet cleaner were found in the water that he used to sell. Hope such things are not happening in Andaman too.