The Ministry of Municipality and Environment is considering a proposal to introduce special courses for employees of eateries to educate them on health and safety requirements.
“According to the proposal, all eateries should provide courses to their workers on dealing with food items and preparing food in healthy conditions. These courses must be supervised by municipalities and at the end of the course, participants will be awarded certificates”, a senior official at the Ministry told The Peninsula.
He said, the courses could be provided by special institutions as in neighbouring countries for which the food outlets will bear the expenses.
“It will help food outlets avoid violations, closures and fines. Thus this exercise will save them from punishments in the form of closures and fines and they can be safe by just spending a little money as fees for the courses," said the official.
Every day restaurants face closure for violating the laws due to lack of skill and awareness among workers. The courses must focus on fundamentals like food laws, how to deal and prepare food items in healthy environment, in addition to personal hygiene and wearing gloves, among others.
Explaining major and minor violations, he said that many restaurants were found storing and preparing food in labour accommodations in unhealthy conditions, and some were practising this only due to ignorance of laws and some due to the high rents of shops and many others reasons.
He said that frequent change of employees was another factor behind growing violations. “We give awareness lectures to the staff but then we find new faces on the next visit," said the official.
In the last two weeks, Al Rayyan municipality conducted seven inspection raids at food outlets and beauty salons and four food outlets were to face closure. Some of these outlets were found preparing food in unhealthy conditions.
