Govt canteen staff asked to trim nails, use clean clothes

Keep your nails trimmed, wash your uniform at least twice or thrice a week, and clean your table with hot water containing soda or soap after every meal. 

These are among a 17-point guidelines issued to employees of canteens in government offices frequented by officers as well as the public as part of the Clean India mission announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The guidelines came against the backdrop of recent inspections during which it came to notice that there is lack of “concern about cleanliness” in canteens.  The inspection, prior to the launch of the Clean India mission, came as a measure to ensure quality of eatables, sanitary conditions and personal hygiene of canteen employees. According to rules, no employee who is suffering from or under treatment for typhoid or dysentery should be allowed to handle food in canteen.  A common sight of flies and cockroaches in canteens will be a thing of the past, with a strict instruction being served to install fly-proof food safes. 

Another unhealthy practice of cleaning vegetables in the same sink where pots and pans are cleaned is also a strict no.

Floors will also not adorn dirty looks any more with employees instructed to clean them by scrubbing with hot water containing soda or soap after every main meal.

Cooks and canteen boys will have to wear clean clothes, and they should wash and change the uniforms “two to three times a week”.  Another instruction is that all those handling food “will keep their nails trimmed” and will “invariably wash their hands before they handle the food”.

Canteen employees will have to clean all the utensils used for preparing food everyday after the last meal. 

“The last one hour before closing hours of the canteen should be used for cleaning utensils, kitchenware, shelves, racks, flooring sinks, basins to keep them ready for use the next day,” it said.

The managing committee of departmental canteens have to carry out cleanliness campaign at least once in a month and a report should be forwarded to the Director of Canteens, Department of Personnel and Training.