Hyderabad: Barely days after live cockroaches were found at an eatery here, reports have emerged about the municipal body’s astonishingly understaffed food safety unit. As more and more restaurants are coming up in India’s fourth-most-populous city, the civic body of Hyderabad seems to be hilariously ill-equipped to check the quality of food being served to the city’s residents.

In a city with an estimated population of over 8.7 million people, a team of merely three people is in charge of ensuring that all registered restaurants and eateries are abiding by the acceptable standards of health and hygiene. Out of the three, two are gazetted food officers while one is a second-grade commissioner.

The team of three have been tasked with assessing complaints related to the code of hygiene that is a prescribed guideline for all eateries in the city. In addition, they also have to address all of the complaints while inspecting hotels and restaurants every now and then. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is reportedly inundated with complaints against violations of the Food Safety Act, however, owing to the obvious shortage of manpower, they have been unable to attend to most of the complaints. This has led to a visible decline in the quality of food being served across the city.

An official, upon the condition of anonymity, told The News Minute, ” A majority of our complaints come on the phone, but we cannot address them immediately. What can we do? We are just three people expected to cover an entire city,” he said adding, “Besides doing our official duty, we additionally have to oversee protocol arrangements of the Chief Minister, President, Vice-President, etc. It’s not just one thing we are doing. We also have to go to the courts. Each officer is handling at least 30 cases from the court and has to be present when the court summons us.”

Source:-http://www.timesnownews.com/mirror-now/civic-issues/article/with-a-population-of-over-8-7-million-people-hyderabad-has-only-three-food-safety-inspectors/230468