'The mayor has no business to raid a star hotel' -Kerala hotels down shutters in protest against raids

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kerala Hotel and Restaurants Association and the South Kerala Hoteliers Forum have called a 24-hour state-wide strike starting Friday midnight, protesting the raids by different organizations on their establishments. "The mayor has no business to raid a star hotel. And when food from the freezer was confiscated, a sample should have been kept in a controlled condition to ascertain its deterioration. I hear that panchayats are also conducting raids. The power to investigate must be vested with just one agency," said M R Narayanan, general secretary, South Kerala Hoteliers Forum at a meeting attended by food safety commissioner Biju Prabhakar. G Sudheesh Kumar, the KHRA president, asked the government to give hoteliers more time to implement the stringent food safety and hygiene laws. At the meeting, Biju Prabhakar said hotels failing to register with his office would be fined. He said the government not having enough number of testing labs (it only has three) was a problem. However, the office of the Commissioner of Food Safety had held periodic seminars and classes (almost 3,000) in the last one year on cleanliness and restaurant-running-protocol such as displaying toll free number of the food safety commissioner near the cashier, maintaining a register of procurement sources, etc. These measures should have prompted hoteliers to set their house in order. However, they hadn't done it and so the government had no option but to do what it is doing, he said. Hoteliers had accepted the suggestion to develop a rating certificate for best hotels, however. The commissioner also asked hotels to avail food safety licences before August 4. Fines would be imposed on those hotels that falter. "Petty food businesses earning less than Rs 12 lakh per annum have to get a food safety licence paying Rs 100; establishments earning over Rs 12 lakh have to pay between Rs 2,000 and 7,000 for the licence. "The government had given hotels and restaurants over a year to avail prevention of food adulteration certificate. But so far only 21,049 petty food businesses and 8,964 regular businesses have registered with us," he said. Prabhakar said of the 571 hotels raided only 14 had been shut down; 281 were handed improvement notice. "A few more face closure today. Our officers have been very humane in their approach in dealing with restaurant owners. Less than 10% were asked to pull down their shutters. Once they get their act together, they can approach us and we will allow them to reopen," he said.

Source:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com