Bengaluru’s civic body officials on Thursday cancelled the trade licenses of 15 dine in and take out restaurants in the city as the outlets were unhygienic and had dirty kitchens.
Between February and April this year, the BBMP health department officials across the eight zones carried out surprise checks at various dine in and take out restaurants, bars and night clubs in the city and found that 15 of them were violating the prescribed hygiene norms.
According to Dr Kalpana, Health Officer of the Mahadevapura zone, the licences of Box 8, Andhra Ruchulu, Annan Mess, Ruh and Punjabi Nawabi were cancelled.
“The cooked dishes were kept open in these restaurants. Flies were gathering around it. The kitchens were dirty and these outlets were not segregating the dry and wet waste either,” she added.
In Dasarahalli zone, Dr Surendra and his team conducted checks and found that Hotel Elite Restaurant and Karama Hotel had unhygienic kitchens.
“The dishes were not washed properly as these hotels had not appointed people to wash dishes. The dishes were dirty and the kitchen equipment was also dirty. The people cooking the food were also not maintaining hygiene,” he added.
According to BBMP health officials, the civic body has sent notices to 20 other eateries in the city regarding unhygienic kitchens in their establishments.
“We are following the procedure. After a notice is issued, we wait for them to respond. Then we will take a call on whether their license must be cancelled or not. We have cancelled the licenses of 15 outlets now. A week later, if they rectify the issues and submit proof, we will consider issuing fresh license,” the official added.
BBMP officials also said that among the 15 restaurants, those with dining spaces had not installed CCTV cameras inside the kitchens. “In 2016, BBMP had made it mandatory for dine in restaurants to install CCTV cameras inside the kitchen so that customers could see how the food was being prepared. This step was taken after an incident in 2016 when around 50 hotels were found to be running unhygienic kitchens and customers had found cockroaches in the food. Apart from having unhygienci kitchens, these restaurants did not have CCTV cameras either,” the BBMP official added.