Anti-adulteration drive intensified in Ctg
The drive comes as a sigh of relief for the people from all walks of life, who are constantly cheated by unscrupulous eateries selling adulterated and stale food during the month of Ramadan.
The drive, however, triggered disappointment as well as resentment among the unscrupulous traders selling substandard, rotten and date-expired food items.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Failing to forge movement against the drive, the quarter has reportedly formed an "alliance of interest" to file case against the magistrate concerned.
The magistrate facing the wrath of the vested quarter for his honest and uncompromising stand against adulteration of food is Chittagong Port Authority (CPA) Magistrate Mohammad Munir Chowdhury .
The mobile court conducted by Munir Chowdhury in a drive at Reazuddin Bazar on the very first day of Ramadan on September 25 seized around 5 metric tons of rotten and date-expired dates, kismis (raisin) from a cold storage -- Rafiq Uddin Siddiquee Cold Storage. He also sealed off the cold storage.
The court also seized over 1000 metric tons of dates in around 35,000 sacks having no expiry dates on them during the drive.
The dates imported in October last year were stored in different rooms in a most unhygienic condition and the traders were preparing to sell those during Ramadan, said Munir Chowdhury.
The court also temporarily sealed off the factory of Daffodil Food of M/s M Rahman and Company, manufacturer of food and Iftar items for inter-city trains of Bangladesh Railway.
The court found that the factory was making Iftar items using date-expired ingredients in unhygienic condition and seized huge quantity of adulterated food items from there.
Besides, the court fined 20 hotels, roadside restaurants and fast food shops over Tk 4 lakh during the last seven days of Ramadan for making Iftar items in open air and unhygienic environment violating pure food ordinance.
The court, in the last four months since June, so far fined bakery and confectionery, hotel and restaurant, godown, ice cream and juice factory, Chinese restaurant, flour mills, departmental stores and hospital canteen.
It also jailed 27 owners and managers of such firms during the period.
Former registrar of Chittagong Medical College (CMC) Dr Shahriar Ahmad, also a diabetic and hormone specialist, said consumption of such food might cause people fall in different water borne diseases like diarrhoea, Hepatitis-A, Hepatitis-E, stomach diseases and other parasitic diseases.
Besides, the foods cooked by the used and impure oil might cause formation of some pre-radical energy in human body cells leading to fatal diseases like cancer, he added.
Md Aziz Uddin, headmaster of Chittagong Collegiate School, lauding the drives said it should continue and extend even outside the city.
Garment worker Shahanara Akhter said the food items, particularly bread, cake and biscuits purchased from such bakery are very often full of insects."
Ali Ashraf, an intern doctor of Chittagong Medical College Hospital (CMCH), said the magistrates from other departments should also come out and carry out more such drives.
He said the lone mobile court by a CPA magistrate can do a little to improve the situation in Chittagong, he said.
Meanwhile, protesting the continued anti-adulteration drives, Chittagong Bakery Owners Association (CBOA) enforced a daylong strike on September 17 in all bakeries and confectionaries, held a grand rally at Laldighi Maidan on September 20 and submitted a memorandum to the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM), Chittagong.
They are now lobbying different business organisations and administrations up to the secretariat level to stop the drive.
Mizanur Rahman Chowdhury, proprietor of Daffodil Food, sent a letter to Prime Minister Khaleda Zia seeking permission to file a case against CPA Magistrate Munir Chowdhury for "harassing" food items producers.
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