Report of the Health Officer, Corporation of Madras Health Department.

  • Madras (India). Health Department
Date:
[1925]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Health Officer, Corporation of Madras Health Department. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    56/244 (page 40)
    Sale of articles of food.—The number of coffee hotels, restaurants and eating houses falling under section 287 is on the increase from year to year. During the year under review 350 applications were received, 292 were sanctioned, 19 applications were refused as the places did not conform with the sanitary requirements. The remaining 39 applications are still pending disposal. The nature of the trade is such that it calls for constant vigilance to see whether the proprietor or proprietors carry out the sanitary regulations as they are in force. For obvious reasons it would be practically difficult to do this rigidly by the available sanitary staff and along with the limted statutory powers it is found difficult to exercise full and wholesome control over their upkeep and maintenance—for in actual practice we have to look for the owner to carry out from day to day the conditions of licenses and the terms of the by-laws. An Officer, or the Sanitary Inspector of the Health Department .might get the required provision of tables, wash-tubs, cups and saucers, but their cleansing and sterilising in fresh or boded water at every turn rents with the proprietor and his servants. It is not practicable for the members of the Health staff to be at every place 3ay- Nor again can we freely regulate the space needed for running them. A large number of coffee-hotels, some of them known under the term “Thanni Pandal” are m smaH stables and the sweet-meat bazaars consist of tiny cubicles facing the street which serve for the purpose of cooking eatables, while the bazaar itself is on a plank or tV'3 mtruding from the edge of the cubicle and encroaching on the road. The bye-laws insist on a glass case, but the glass case is absent or made ineffective during the busy hours of the evening. Mere prosecutions will not solve these problems and even where licenses are not recommended by the department, the more influential ones succeed in keep.ng up their stalls ultimately by appeals &c. There must be greater restrictions m regard to available space for places where articles of food and drink are sold. The minimum area of space should be sufficient to at least accommodate a kitchen, a store- : m> an eating hall and a scullery; and these apartments should be well separated from each other. These restrictions should be vigorously enforced and no concessions on grounds of smallness of business or poverty must be taken into consideration. The Corporation has not been in a position till now to exercise sufficient and necessary control over the sale and exposure for sale of unwholesome articles of food dllnlc‘ F°0r* must not on,-y Really sound in quality but it must be sufficient in quantity and nutritive m value. Consumption of bad and contaminated food has been hrSe]y r_es',onsib,e for intestinal disorders, fevers, etc., Measures for the protection preservation, and distribution of articles of food for consumption are urgently called or. An act for the preventon of adulteration of articles of food is already on the tatue booh and its extension and application to the city is entirely left to the discre- tion of the Corporation.