Eat your fill, Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation ensures safety

Owners of sweets shops have had to pay the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) hefty fines for keeping sweets in unhygienic conditions. Due to the civic body's health drive, in the last one week health officials have collected more than Rs1 lakh as fine from sweet shops, fast food joints, restaurants and plastic bag manufacturers located in each zone of the city.

For instance, health officials of the city's New West Zone collected a whopping Rs1.2 lakh as fine from sweet shops. The civic body had recently made it compulsory for food manufacturers to mention the date of manufacture on the food packets to ensure that residents did not have to eat stale food.

Despite the fact that sweets shops were informed about the new rule, many shops had failed to paste labels mentioning the date of manufacture on food packets. Deputy health officer of New West Zone, Dr Milan Nayak, said that officials had collected Rs75, 000 of the total fine in just four days from October 20 to 24.

"The fine was collected from several places - from sweet shops, fast food joints, plastic bag manufacturers, etc - who were found violating the norms for hygiene, and using plastic bags that were not of the permitted thickness."

Deputy health officer of Central Zone, Dr Bhavin Joshi, had the same thing to say. He gave some figures to illustrate the fact that the AMC's drive for hygienic food during the festival had been a success.

"In our zone, we have collected Rs1.14 lakh as fine. Of this, we collected Rs75, 000 in just 12 days. On Tuesday, we checked many food shops and collected Rs9, 000 as fine from shops. Similarly, on Monday, we collected Rs 30,000 as fine."

With strict health raids and frequent inspection by officials, the civic body has ensured that the health of city residents did not suffer due to food kept in unhygienic conditions.