Hygiene lessons for Surat’s street food vendors

Surat: Street food lovers in Surat can look forward to eating top quality food, prepared and served with the highest level of hygiene in the near future. With cooks wearing hand gloves, aprons and caps and ensuring that no body part touch your food till it is being served to you, eating out will be a no more a matter of health concern. In a city like Surat, where street food eaters outnumber restaurant diners, a healthy food culture is essential for the city’s overall health.
Looking into this, Surat Municipal Corporation invited the National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI) to train around 8,000 street food vendors in the city on hygiene and cleanliness issues, a batch of 1,000 street food vendors in the city are currently under training. These vendors will be trained in batches in the week-long programmes. Each day vendors of one zone will be trained on not only hygiene matters, but also how to take care of solid waste generated on the spot.
Jigisha Bhaya, a street food seller who sells pav-bhaji and pulav near Jeevan Bharti school in Nanpura, said, “I had always been wearing an apron while cooking, but this training and awareness programme will go a long way in setting up a different, healthier street food culture in our city. I believe in healthy, hygienically prepared food is integrated to a healthy body.”
Health officials of the civic body pointed out to the unhygienic condition in which eateries make and sell parathas. Not only cooks knead the dough with bare hands, the used dishes and other utensils are also cleaned next to him in a bucket filled with dirty water. “This can’t be tolerated. Food should be prepared and served hygienically. With this programme we hope to instill cleanliness among the street food vendors,” he said.
Dr Ashish Niak , deputy commissioner of health, SMC, said, “We will impose fines or administrative charges for those not adhering to the hygiene as a deterrence measure and hope that once we complete imparting this training and provide vendors with the kit of aprons, caps and gloves, Surtis will be able to enjoy good, clean cart food.”