‘Street food vendors’ attend workshop

Pg. 11. Sat. March 1/08

Story Rebecca Quaicoe Duho

A number of people who find themselves outside the home during the day due to their work schedules, have resorted to buying and eating food from ‘street food vendors’ especially, during lunch hours.
Such food comprise a wide variety of ‘ready-to-eat’ foods such as cooked rice, fried yam, banku, plantain, fufu, konkonte with soup, sauce and stew and beverages, which are sometimes prepared and sold in public places.
According to researchers, the patronage of food from street vendors is common in many countries where unemployment is high, salaries are low, work opportunities and social programmes are limited, and where urbanisation is prevalent.
By selling snacks, meals and refreshments at relatively low prices, street food vendors provide an essential service to workers, shoppers, travellers and many others.
What is worrying, however, is that most consumers are mostly interested in getting satisfied than to look for safety, quality and hygiene.
Health officials say the consumption of ‘street food’ can be one major cause of the spread of diseases in the country as most of these foods are not prepared under hygienic conditions and are contaminated during their preparation and improper handling by vendors.
The handling and processing of food is very vital as poor handling or processing can cause food poisoning, typhoid, cholera or diarrhoea.
To enlighten street food vendors on the essence of good hygiene, 30 food vendors, including two men from the Greater Accra Region have undergone a three-day training programme aimed at educating and upgrading their skills in food processing and handling.
The training, which was organised by the Women in Agriculture Directorate (WIAD) of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, was also aimed at educating the vendors on the potential dangers that their actions and inaction can cause to consumers who patronise their services.
The vendors were taken through basic nutritional education, food handling and safety, food processing (fortification) and business and financial management.
The Deputy Minister of Agriculture in charge of Livestock and WIAD, Mrs Hannah Nyamekye, who opened the workshop, said the industry served as a major source of income and employment for entrepreneurs with low capital base especially, women and the youth.
She said “growing urbanisation and its associated changes to the way food is produced, marketed and consumed also presented a potential food-borne hazard as a single source can have widespread consequences”.
Mrs Nyamekye, therefore, called on the participants to ensure that they applied the knowledge they had acquired to ensure the safety of their consumers.
According to the minister, street food vendors whose food were affordable “are indeed our lifeline especially, at this time when many people are time constrained due to work-related issues and traffic congestion in the cities”.
She said the vendors were made to go through health checks and screened for infectious diseases, adding that “there is still the need to sensitise them on the proper handling of food both before and after it has been prepared to avoid contamination”.
The acting Director of WIAD, Ms Paulina Addy, called on the vendors not to only think of the profit that they could make but also take the health needs of their customers into consideration.
She called on them to consider the quality of ingredients and water used, the environment in which they operated, the handling, processing and safety of the food, as well as ensure that they washed their hands frequently.
Ms Addy reminded the participants that they served as an important link in preventing food-borne illnesses and, therefore, called on them to practise good personal hygiene.
The Officer in charge of the Value Added Tax Unit of WIAD, Rev Mrs Nyuieme Adiepena, said another batch of vendors would be trained later. She, therefore, called on the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) and the government for that matter to provide appropriate places for the vendors to operate.
She said the directorate, which started the training programme last year, had so far trained 60 market women on proper handling of foodstuffs and added that they would be monitoring their activities to ensure that they operated under approved conditions.