KMC to come up with 10 zones in city selling safe, hygienic street food

Kolkata: Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will come up with ten food zones in different parts of the city, which will have stalls selling street food maintaining all requisite food safety parameters.

The civic body on Tuesday unveiled a brief report after conducting a study on Assessment of Street Food Quality and Safety in Kolkata, with the aim to find an easy and implementable method to make street food safe in a sustained manner.

"A senior official of the Calcutta Tramways Company met me a few days ago. There are a number of trams that are lying condemned in various depots in the city. We have plans to develop food zones in some of these condemned trams, where street food vendors will sell food maintaining all food safety parameters," said Deputy Mayor Atin Ghosh, who also heads the Health department of KMC.

The study was conducted by dividing 104 areas in Kolkata into ten zones with Indira Chakravarty, a public health expert, acting as the coordinator.

Park Street, New Market, Dacres Lane, Rabindra Sadan, APC Road, Bidhan Sarani, Rashbehari Avenue, Sarat Bose Road, Writers Building, Brabourne Road, Jadavpur, Garfa, Hatibagan and Shyambazar were among the areas covered.

"We have found that the maximum number of vendors (around 76 percent) prepare and sell food at the same place. So on the spot motivation and awareness generation is possible. Proper garbage handling and its removal, washing of hands, cleaning of the water containers and wearing cleaner clothes are some of the aspects which can be improved significantly through awareness," said Chakravarty.

The exercise also involved the scoring and grading of the food vendors on these parameters like excellent, very good, good and fair, based on 42 sub-indicators.

Foundation for Community Support and Development, Bureau of Indian Standards, World Health Organisation and a leading drinks and beverage company acted as partners of KMC in the compilation of the report.

"Street food is very popular in Kolkata and we are taking all possible

measures to ensure that street food vendors maintain a standard of hygiene," Ghosh said.