Children’s death: Served notice to restaurant two months earlier, says food authority

— Post-mortem of Karachi minors allegedly killed by food poisoning complete

KARACHI: The director of the Sindh Food Authority on Monday said that a restaurant in Karachi’s Zamzama area where two children died from food poisoning had been served an improvement notice two months earlier.

Speaking about the deaths of two children on Sunday afternoon, Sindh Food Authority Director Abrar Sheikh told a local media that the restaurant had been inspected around two months ago and was served an improvement notice along with a checklist to complete.

The Authority’s director further stated that it [the Sindh Food Authority] did not issue a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to the restaurant, and will expedite the process of registering eateries from the province by the end of the month, explaining that the provincial assembly passed into law the Sindh Food Authority Act a few months ago and officers had also been recently appointed to bolster the authority’s resources.

FUNERAL PRAYERS OFFERED

Funeral prayers were offered on Monday for the two children, Ahmed, 18 months old, and Muhammad, 5, who lost their lives on Sunday afternoon from food poisoning after dining at a restaurant in Karachi.

The funeral prayers of the brothers were offered at a mosque in Karachi’s Defence.

Speaking to the media outside the mosque, relatives of the two children demanded that the food inspector be arrested and an inquiry into the incident be completed at the earliest.

Earlier in the day, after the completion of post-mortem of the deceased, a representative of Karachi’s Jinnah Hospital confirmed that two minor boys who passed away on Sunday had died due to food poisoning.

According to Dr Shiraz, the medico-legal officer (MLO) at Jinnah Hospital, a report related to the post-mortem of deceased children has been reserved. “Poisoning is the apparent reason of their death,” he said, adding that samples from the blood and body specimens had been taken and sent to the laboratory for the tests.

“The chemical analysis report from the body and blood specimens will be released in next 5-10 days,” Dr Shiraz said, after which the real reason of the deaths will be ascertained.

The dead bodies of the minors were handed over to the family, which has planned their funerals in the afternoon on Monday, at Mosque Al-Aisha on Khayaban-e-Ittihad.

On Sunday, Karachi Police sealed an up-scale eatery after two minor siblings, a one-and-a-half-year-old and a five-year-old, died on Sunday afternoon of ‘food poisoning’.

Initial reports suggested that the family had dined out at Defence Housing Authority’s (DHA) Arizona Grill restaurant and also consumed candy from a shop outside Chunky Monkey amusement park located in Phase IV, DHA.

However, the mother-sons trio had fallen ill the next morning and were rushed to a hospital in a critical condition, said police. The mother, though out of danger, is still under treatment.

Responding to the incident, the police sealed both the restaurant and the playland, from which the candies were purchased by the two children, and have launched an investigation into the incident. Also, the food samples from the eatery have been sent to the Sindh Food Authority (SFA) for examination.

The police further formed an inquiry committee which has been tasked to give its findings in the next three days. Further, the police also decided to include the husband and brother of the affected woman into the investigation.

The police collected food samples in the refrigerator present in the home of the affected family.

Meanwhile, Sindh CM Murad Ali Shah and Governor Imran Ismail took notice of the incident and summoned report from the authorities concerned.

CM Murad has instructed that a report be submitted of the last time the two facilities underwent an inspection, with details of the inspection mechanism clearly outlined. He has also issued instructions for the identification of government institutions whose negligence could have contributed to this incident.