Owing to the need of food safety and hygiene practiced by the street vendors, the National Association Street Vendor of India (NASVI), organized “Project Serve Safe Food” (PSSF), on Friday here at Tourist Lodge. The project is a corporate social responsibility initiative of Nestle India Limited and supported by Food Safety Authority Nagaland and DMC to ensure proper training to the street food vendors in Dimapur.
Deputy Commissioner Dimapur, Sachin Jaiswal in his keynote address, said that every section of the people cannot afford eating at restaurant or hotels, therefore street food was important to serve the purpose. He urged the street vendors to maintain hygiene surrounding and provide healthy food to the consumer since eating directly determines the health of humans and requested the vendors to dispose of garbage at the designated areas given by the municipal council.
Deputy Commissioner of Police Dimapur Vesupra Kezo, in his address said that Nagaland was a hub for business, while maintaining that ensuring quality, clean food to customer was important. He also urged the vendors to maintain time schedule set by the administration and also to maintain proper space with their establishment on the roadside to ensure free movement of traffic.
Dimapur Municipal Council Administrator W. Manpai Phom, encouraged the vendors to have open mind and to be equipped with all necessary information on food safety and hygiene practices provided by the trainee, and get the Food Safety Training & Certificate. He said that there were many business establishments around Dimapur but since street food directly deal with health of the people, he urged the vendors to maintain standard hygiene in their service. He also reminded that cleanliness was absent in Dimapur and added that it should be everyone’s responsibility to ensure the cleanliness.
Senior manager, branch corporate affairs, Nestlé India Ltd, Surojit Mukherjee in his welcome speech informed that the objective of the training was to make street vendors aware of providing safe, hygienic and healthy food to the consumers and also aimed to enable the street food vendors to sustain and better livelihoods.
Mukherjee said the training would be focused on health and hygiene including personal hygiene and cart hygiene, food handling and food safety, cleaning and pest control and waste management –garbage disposal.
He added that Nestlé in partnership with NASVI aims to provide training to 500 street food vendors in (Kohima and Dimapur) with the support from Food Safety Authority, Nagaland and DMC.
Designated officer food safety administration Dimapur zone, Samuel Zehol said that Food Safety & Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) was established to fix food standards and to regulate and monitor the manufacturing, import, processing, distribution and sale of food so as to ensure safe and wholesome food for the consumers.
Zehol said that the vendors must maintain the law regarding admissibility and levels of food additives, food colouring and preservatives, while encouraging the vendors and the public to come to the food test laboratory which is set up at the CMO office and to get the food items checked. Around 40 street food vendors participated at the launching programme and provided Food Safety Training and Certification (FoSTaC) certificates and hygiene kit.