Businesses selling unhygienic food are flourishing in Islamabad without check on part of the authorities as stalls of cut fruits may be seen at almost all van stops, markets and streets, thus jeopardizing the citizens’ health. Cut fruit vendors make money selling these items at stalls without any protection from flies, dust, etc. It was observed during a visit that vendors did not take much care of cleanliness and a lot of flies were found sitting on their utensils and cut fruit. When questioned by this scribe about the flies on the utensils which made the fruit unhygienic, Raza Khan, a cut fruit vendor, who uses a bicycle with a stall installed on it to move around, replied, “This is an open place and it is difficult for me to control them.” He was using a hand fan to get rid of them but in vain.
It was also observed that he cleaned all the plates into the single water tub he could fit onto his bicycle. At one such stall at F-8 markaz, a large number of people were buying cut fruit despite the large number of flies and dust on it. Cut fruit vendors put spices on fruits like peaches, guava, etc. The majority of people know that these food items are dangerous for health, but still consume them, especially at lunch time when people are hungry and have no other choice except to eat these cut fruits, because all other food items in the markets are too spicy or pricey etc.
Parvez Majeed, a taxi driver who was buying the fruit from a roadside vendor at Peshawar Mor taxi stand, told Pakistan Today, “I know this is not health friendly, but I am very hungry at this time and there is no other option for me as this is the cheapest.”
When contacted, PIMS spokesperson Dr Waseem Khawaja said, “Mostly these vendors do not wash the fruit properly, which causes stomach diseases like cholera. This is also one of the major sources of gastro and gastroenteritis.” He added that vendors also did not wash utensils and many people used the same utensils, so if a person had some transferable disease, through these utensils this disease could be transferred to the next person.
