Foods that are served in urban hotels and restaurants are often of low quality. Even in posh restaurants in the capital, eaters cannot be sure that they would get their choicest foods in good quality. It is common knowledge among people that in some restaurants, dead poultry meat is served to the unsuspecting foot lovers. Besides stale and rotten foods, the places where these foods are cooked are often found to be unhygienic. Even the cook who prepares the food is found to be in a dirty, unclean condition.

There is a perception among people that if someone who looks at the environment where the foods are cooked in restaurants, he will surly lose his appetite. But a large number of people, especially in urban places, depend on the food served in these hotels and restaurants.

Many are also attracted to street foods which are also of questionable quality and a section people, especially the young ones, are fond of eating them with no knowledge that these foods can do them great harm.

Until now, the government’s relevant agencies have failed to protect public health from this health menace. What we actually see some news in media, in months for example, that the law enforcing agency has fined restaurant owners for providing unhealthy foods to their customers.

One piece of such news surfaced in this newspaper yesterday when a mobile court of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) slapped four restaurants a total of Tk 4 lakh as fine in the capital’s Moghbazar area for keeping food items in an unhygienic condition. The restaurants preserved cooked and uncooked meat in the same refrigerators, made unhealthy products in unhealthy environment and sold food items without a price tag.

Conducting mobile courts is an initiative in the right direction, but when the unhealthy foods are served in the capital’s every place, what is the use for only fining the restaurants at Moghbazaar only? It would be much better, from time to time, to make combing operation all over the capital for bringing the guilty owners of hotels and restaurants to books. And this is necessary in not just the capital, but all urban places.  

Consumers are also need to be aware of their rights. They should know that they can sue a culpably responsible owner of restaurant for serving sub standard food items.