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HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
10. MR. LAM CHAK-PIU asked the following question (in Cantonese):- Summer has come and I would like to know what special measures the Council has taken with regard to food hygiene for the protection of public health?
MR. L. H. KWAN, CHAIRMAN OF THE FOOD HYGIENE SELECT COMMITTEE, replied as follows (in Cantonese):—The question asks what measures have the Council taken with regard to food hygiene for the protection of public health with the approach of summer.
Indeed the Council, as in the past years, is very concerned about food hygiene in summer. The special measures taken could broadly be grouped into the following three main areas:
Firstly for restaurant and other eating establishments, all district health inspectors have been instructed to pay special attention to the prevention of food-borne diseases including food poisoning. Such measures include protection of food from contamination, good personal habits of food handlers, clean food rooms and toilets, elimination of pests etc. Health talks to licensees and food handlers would stress on these and enforcement actions will also be intensified.
Secondly for unlicensed hawkers, the General Duties Teams have been instructed to step up enforcement actions against all hawkers selling cooked food and cold drinks. Such action will include arrests and seizure of commodities and paraphernalia. Specially designed eye-catching posters will be widely distributed to warn the public not to patronize unlicensed cooked food hawkers.
Thirdly, on general health education, the Health Education Unit of the Municipal Services Branch and the two municipal councils jointly launched a territory-wide food hygiene campaign on 4 June 88. The target aims both at people in the food trade and householders. A series of 17 seminars (7 for HK, 10 for Kowloon) for managers and supervisors in the food trade will be held in the Urban Council Area. The respective Chief Health Inspectors in the Districts will attend the seminars in the Districts to give a talk and discuss with participants on good practices in food hygiene. It is expected that there will be 3000 food-related participants upon completion of the campaign. Apart from this, food hygiene seminars are also organised for school teachers who are expected to convey the message to pupils in special sessions after the examinations but before summer holidays. For the public at large, a TV-API on good food hygiene practices will be screened. Information leaflets will also be distributed through the various USD district offices.
MR. LAM CHAK-PIU (in Cantonese):-Mr. Chairman, a supplementary question. Some control measures and publicity have been satisfactorily done. But there is a concrete problem in front of us. In the urban area, some unlicensed hawkers operate in the night time and various kinds of cold drinks including Malaysian food
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are provided. Have our Food Hygiene Select Committee and Municipal Services Branch taken any special measures to deal with night time unlicensed hawkers?
CHAIRMAN (in English):-Night_time hawkers is hardly the problem of the Chairman of the Food Hygiene Committee. I wonder if.......
MR. L. H. KWAN (in English): Mr. Chairman, if I may request you to exercise your discretion of asking the Chairman of the Markets and Street Traders to answer this particular question in respect of the evening hawkers selling food and drinks, etc.
DR. ELSIE TU (in English):--Mr. Chairman, I am surprised that Mr. Lam asked the question because he is the Vice-Chairman of my Committee (Laughter). We do have our men on the job at night time and they should be taking action against the cooked food hawkers but unfortunately sometimes these cooked food hawkers set themselves up in places which are not patrolled by our men. And then they become the problem of the Police. The matter has been drawn to the attention of the Police and also our General Duties Teams where they are in area which is controlled by our GDTs, action should be taken. As far as the health side is concerned that of course would not be done by our GDTs. They simply remove the hawkers because they shouldn't be there anyhow. What they do about testing the food I suppose comes under the Committee of Mr. KWAN Lim-ho. I can only say I can refer this matter to the Markets and Street Traders Select Committee and ask whether they can give us an answer as to what they do about testing the food which is sold at night time in the areas which are controlled by our GDTs and what happens in the areas which are controlled by the Police. That is all I can say.
MR. TONG KAM-BIU (in Cantonese):-Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Recently, undeniably there has been an increase in a number of hawkers selling cold drinks or cold food, I wonder whether the Food Hygiene Select Committee would come up with special measures to control these? A number of hawkers put on sale a large number of beverage e.g. fruits juices and so on. Do we have to ask these hawkers to get a licence before they can sell such items or must these kinds of juices be boiled or freezed to a certain temperature before they can be sold? Up to now, there seems to be no evidence that food poisoning cases arising from this kind of food items have been reported yet. If there were cases, then it will be very serious since we really observe quite a lot of number of these hawkers. I wonder if the Select Committee can come up with some control measures?
MR. L. H. KWAN (in Cantonese): Mr. Chairman, in response to Mr. TONG's concern over food hygiene issues, Health Inspectors of USD are aware the summer is now approaching and they are taking special actions to deal with the matter.
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