Staff Reporter :
Sales of sub-standard and adulterated Iftar items markets in and outside Dhaka, defying the government efforts to save people from health risks.
Owners of makeshift Iftar shops are doing brisk business by selling the adulterated items since the beginning of Ramzan. Most of the Iftar items are being sold in unhygienic places, according to them, the fasting people alleged.
Some of these foods items are piazu (deep-fried lentil paste), beguni (deep-fried brinjal slices), potato chop (deep-fried mashed potato ball), halim (a stew-like dish made of wheat, barley, meat, lentils and spices), jilipi (sweet) and local and imported fruits. Artificial colours are randomly mixed with most of these food items, they further said.
Some traders are also using impure and adulterated soybean oil to make these fried Iftar items. After eating these colour-treated and adulterated items many people have reportedly fallen sick. Most of them are attacked with diarrhoea, dysentery and other intestinal diseases.
Physicians observed that children are the worst-hit by different toxic chemicals and textile dyes used to colour Iftar items. Mangoes, pineapples, papayas and bananas are being artificially ripened by using a carcinogenic (cancer inducing) chemical called ethylene oxide and calcium carbide. SM Mahfujur Rahman, Executive Magistrate of BSTI and Assistant Commissioner (Land) of Dhaka district, told The New Nation on Tuesday, “We fined a shop in old Dhaka Tk 50,00 as it had been using fake seal of the BSTI and prepared food items in unhygienic way.” A BSTI high official seeking anonymity said around 99 per cent Iftar item are selling without approval of the government.
Unscrupulous traders always take advantage of the shortage of mobile courts, he said.
“We find sub-standard food items every time we conduct any drive in a shop or home,” the official said with frustration.
Ali Akbar, an Iftar shop owner at Kamlapur, said he never seen any mobile court in the last ten years.
Shopna Khanom, a buyer, said, “I failed to prepare Iftar items because of office duty. And that is why my family fully depends on these temporary Iftar shops, though I’m is quite aware of its low quality.” Dr Md Yasin Ali of a private clinic said if a person eat contaminated food, it gets rapidly digested and transmitted into the blood, causing serious health hazards. Poribesh Bachao Andolon Chairman Abu Naser Khan, also expressed dismay over such adulterated foods in city markets. A section of unscrupulous traders driven by their greed for windfall profits uses various chemicals, including formalin, in fruits and fish to keep those fresh for long, which adversely affects human health, he said.
