Food adulteration continues in Ctg

A section of unscrupulous businessmen are reportedly producing and marketing different sorts of adulterated and substandard food in Chittagong ahead of Ramadan, posing serious health hazards to consumers.
Sources in city’s business hub Chaktai-Khatunganj said such businesspeople started producing a huge quantity of vermicelli, noodles, ghee, juice and different sorts of spices using substandard ingredients to make a fast buck during the month of Ramadan.
Most of the factories producing adulterated food are located at Chaktai, Khatunganj, Asadganj, Kurbaniganj and Kalamiar Bazar areas. The products of these factories are being sold with sticking labels of different famous brands.
‘Unscrupulous businessmen produce ghee using flavour with a mixture of palm oil, course flour and chemical,’ said a businessman at Chaktai. ‘They are mixing rotten rice grains, toxic dyes and even powdered bricks with chilli powder’.
He said a few companies were also cheating the people with bottled water and juice as they were engaged in refilling the used bottles and cans. ‘The trend of food adulteration gets momentum this year in the absence of mobile court drives’.
Another businessman said food adulteration continues round the year but it gains momentum ahead of Ramadan. ‘The Chittagong City Corporation and law enforcing agencies seem indifferent to check the food adulteration for reasons unknown to them.’
The deputy commissioner Farid Uddin Ahmed Chowdhury said they would launch an anti-adulteration drive by this week. Two executive magistrates would lead the mobile courts against the food adulteration.
He also said the executive magistrates would be able to take instant punitive measures. The mobile courts would be launched in association with the city corporation and Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institute.
The commissioner of the Chittagong Metropolitan Police Mohammed Moniruzzaman said they had intensified drives against the food adulteration before Ramadan. They had recently arrested a few people on charge of food adulteration, he claimed.
‘We conduct regular drives against the food adulteration and have intensified it in recent times as the trend peaks ahead of Ramadan.’
Sources in the Rapid Action Battalion said they had already formed a team comprising an official from the BSTI. The team unearthed several fake factories during the past one month.

Courtesy of NewAgebd