Mangaluru: District food safety officials conducted a surprise inspection at a hotel in Thokkotu on Tuesday after a customer complained of allegedly finding a cockroach in a dish served at the hotel.Dr Praveen Kumar CH, district food safety officer, told TOI that a local resident who had gone to the hotel for breakfast recorded a video purportedly showing a cockroach in the dish and sent it to the department.“There was no proper cleanliness, food had been piled up and there was no separate storage room,” he said, adding that food items had been stored inside the premises, with the area around a covered well also being used for storage.He said officials directed the hotel management to immediately clean the premises, issued a notice and gave strict instructions to maintain hygiene and food safety standards.Praveen said the department expects establishments to undertake cleaning immediately when officials find deficiencies, rather than merely promising to rectify them later. He said hotels are also expected to carry out regular cleaning, including during the gap between lunch and evening service.So far, the department has conducted around 15 inspections in the district.He said complaints received through the QR-code-based system are uploaded daily and each complaint is assigned a time limit of seven days for resolution. Officials attend to complaints in the order in which they are received and do not intentionally keep complaints pending.“Whatever comes first, we clear it first,” he said, adding that the software provides officials with the stipulated time limit for attending to each complaint.Since the launch of the QR-code complaint system, around 26 complaints have been received, he said.He said the system has resulted in complaints reaching the department more quickly, allowing officials to take them up and resolve them within the prescribed time.
