Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder warned the restaurant owners that their licenses would be cancelled if they are found involved in selling ‘substandard’ food.
“The government will cancel the licenses of the restaurants if they sell ‘unsafe’ or low quality food for the consumers,” he said at a ‘grade’ distribution programme for the hotels, restaurants, bakery and sweetmeat factories at Hotel-71 in the capital on Sunday (Dec 22).
All the city restaurants will be marked in four categories – green or A plus, blue or A, yellow or B and orange or C – on the basis of their food quality and hygiene, BSS quoted the minister as saying.
Under the grading system, Majumder said the orange or ‘C’ category restaurant will get one month time for improving their food quality and management system, otherwise their licenses will be cancelled.
The ‘best quality’ restaurants will be identified with A+ or green colour stickers while the ‘good quality’ restaurants will be marked with A or blue colour stickers.
On the other hand, the ‘average good quality’ restaurants will be identified as B category or get yellow colour stickers and ‘low quality food’ restaurant will fall under C category or get orange colour stickers, the release added.
Participating in the programme, Food Secretary Dr Musammat Nazmanara Khanum said, “This is an international standard grading system,” adding that all the restaurants across the country would be brought under the system in future.
On Apr 2 in 2018, Bangladesh Food Safety Authority inaugurated the programme by providing a sticker to the Kasturi hotel under a pilot project launched in Motijheel, Paltan and Secretariat area in the city.