NST on Wednesday 23 April reported another incident of food poisoning at Sekolah Kebangsaan Taman Dato Harun 1, PJ involving 120 pupils. The culprit? Food from the canteen.
I think most of us already felt sick and annoyed to hear about food poisoning cases at schools for the past few months. It has been accepted as normal incidence for canteen operator and school administrators. The worse part is, majority of the cases were caused by food prepared on site. What is wrong with this? Are food safety and hygiene is not being practiced at all in the schools kitchen? Or to be more realistic, do the operators know, understand and practice food safety and personal hygiene while handling food for the kids? Knowing and attending compulsory courses conducted by local councils seems to be inadequate for them. Masuk telinga kanan, keluar telinga kiri. Pick one school of your choice, ask one of the canteen operators, have they heard about E. Coli, Salmonella, taun etc2? Most of the time you'll get a blank face as if you are speaking German.
On another note, should we revisit the local council roles in ensuring that these operators do have basic knowledge of the cause of food poisoning and ways to prevent it from happening? All food handlers must be vaccinated for typhoid, but some of these operators were not even vaccinated. Don't believe me? Ask them to show the proof of vaccination. Not all of the workers has been vaccinated. Some local council also make it compulsory for business involving food served to the public to attend short courses on food safety and hygiene. But...if they really attend those courses, why we are still seeing food poisoning cases one after another? It is just a BASIC training, but it is enough for TOM, DICK and HARRY to understand and practice what they've learned from the course. They don't need to understand and know that E.Coli is a gram negative, anaerobic bacteria. But yet they failed to understand the importance of food safety and hygiene!! Or....do local council really do their job in enforcing, do random checking on all food joints for signs of failure to comply to food safety practice? I rarely see them doing health safety inspections nowadays. You'll see more of them giving fines to traffic offenders than fines to food joints. Of course la...kedai mamak or restaurants or even canteen can give them free meals to avoid any actions from them, but we, traffic user can't give them anything. Just headache to them. Is this true? Come to your own conclusion...
What if your kid or even you yourself being struck by food poisoning due to others negligence?
I'll be pissed. You'll miss your work, your kid will miss his/her school, worst is he/she might be hospitalised for severe fluid loss from diarrhoea and vomiting with unbearable stomach pain, and worst will be death. Do you want this to happen again? Not me.
From now on, everybody should take the responsibility, big responsibility. Local council, act fast, do frequent health safety inspection, enforce on strict procedures for food outlet to get their licenses by making compulsory for them to attend short courses on food safety. Canteen operators, please comply to the food safety and hygiene. Take it lightly and I hope we will enact new acts to punish these errant food handlers/canteen operators. Punishment should be hard enough to give them a lesson. Teachers/school administration...take this issue seriously. Punish, suspend, or even terminate those canteen operators who disregard the public safety. This is not the time anymore for heart-to-heart discussion with these canteen operators. We mean business, and wrongdoing must be punished!
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
Sports Nation
Last weekend was quite a good weekend for us. We went to Padang UTM Jln Semarak to watch KRS Premiere League Finals on Saturday. My kid really enjoyed it, although for me it was just a time to catch up with my friends, seniors and juniors from SAS. FYI, ASAS won 17-5 vs COBRA BLACKS. Congrates ASAS! Afiq & I went for a quick swim on Sunday morning at the pool at our place, while my wife went for hill-climbing at Bukit Melawati with her office mates. Weekends full of activities!
That remind me of our sweet memories while in Australia. Sports in Australia is popular and widespread. Australia seems to be the sports and outdoor activity capital of the world. Flip through the newspaper and you'll find an event to go during the weekend. From motorsports, footy, rugby, just name it. What more important is, they enjoy the sports as a family. It's the time for the family to spend time together, it's the time for friends to enjoy their weekend, it's the spirit of the sports that bring them together. Do we share the same spirit in Malaysia? Well, to certain extent. We need to work harder to be at the same level as them. We need to go out more. Enjoy outdoors! Yes bring your kid, bring your family out to the field, and let them experience the adrenaline rush watching the teams fighting for scores. Let them feel for the game. Spend less time at the shopping malls...what's the point of window shopping? Yea you don't need to tell me that kids do enjoy browsing though the toys section. Mine too but trust me, they'll enjoy more by being outdoor, they'll appreciate more about sports, about team spirit, about spending time with family. And hopefully they'll do the same with their family later in their life. Bring our sports to a higher level, true.. the athletes should do their parts, train harder, perform better, but we can help them by cultivating 'sports culture' in our country. We can discover more excellent athletes when we have a large pool of athletes to choose from. Get out more!
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Price Hike again!!
I saw the news on the price of rice, flour even mee....everything will go up. What the @#$%?? Let us look at this in a simple way...let's talk about rice first..Malaysia is not a nett importer country for rice, so we do produce our own rice towards certain extent. According to NST, we do have enough supply for rice until September, from import and locally produced. This is due to the Rice Stockpile Policy. We only import up to 30% of the total rice stock. 30%! So why the price hike? If it's due to the imports, then we should be more strict in regulating the imports. We need to give priority to our local agri product than the imports. Who'll get the benefit from the increase imported rice price? Importers. Will the gain in profit from the sale of imported rice benefited the rakyat? NO. We will suffer, the big importer companies will get the profit, or to be nice to them, marginal or no impact from the higher rice market price worldwide by increasing their margins and asking us, the consumer to absorb 100% of the price hike by passing the burden to pay the extras to us. Average Abu (well Joe Blogg does not really sound local isn't it?) out there will need to fork out more every month to feed his family. Does this do justice to us?
Mind you, if we did not control the trivial issue of rising cost of life from now, then just imagine the worst at the end of the tunnel. Definitely Abu will someday ask for a payrise as his current pay can't really get him and his family through the month. That's the vicious cycle we need to prevent from rolling fast like the wheel of F1 car.
Mind you the government did mentioned that the price of Super Spesial Tempatan 15% (SST) will not rise, but what is the percentage of national consumption for the SST? 10-30%. Trust me, next time you go to kedai mamak, and order an extra plate of rice, you'll be charged more than usual. "Harga beras naik la boss", that's the expected answer from the mamak. The total bill for your standard meal will cost you more, isn't it? If food industry uses SST, the consumption rate won't be 15%, right? Just do simple maths, drive through your neighbourhood area, do a quick survey on number of food stalls, restaurants, food joints etc2. Just come up with a gross figure of people who order rice variants, from nasi goreng, nasi campur, etc2, & you'll definitely know that those 15% does not come from the food industry. Think for yourself....
We need more radical policy to nurture and cultivate our local agri industry. We should at least be self-sufficient in certain product, while maintaining good balance between importing and exporting our own agri products. Having read Dr Amin Mahir Abdullah, the Agri-business and Management Policy laboratory head for UPMs Agriculture and food Policy Research Institute (IKDPM) comments on the newly developed strain, MRQ74 or “Mas Wangi” in 2005 which is on par with the Thai fragrant rice, is considered "not being able to compete in the market" by our local market or by other authority is very sickening and heart wrenching. To change market perspective on local products is tough, but if the regulation is there to highlight our product more in the market rather than the imports, by simple economic law we can deduced that we will definitely see an increased in sales for local products. Saturate the market, numb the customer with ads or increased the visibility factor on the local products, make it mandatory for hypermarkets to display it, educate them, do whatever you like under the sun to increase the sale, then one day we will see 'Mas Wangi' as something we will buy over the imports. Don't you think?
Mind you, if we did not control the trivial issue of rising cost of life from now, then just imagine the worst at the end of the tunnel. Definitely Abu will someday ask for a payrise as his current pay can't really get him and his family through the month. That's the vicious cycle we need to prevent from rolling fast like the wheel of F1 car.
Mind you the government did mentioned that the price of Super Spesial Tempatan 15% (SST) will not rise, but what is the percentage of national consumption for the SST? 10-30%. Trust me, next time you go to kedai mamak, and order an extra plate of rice, you'll be charged more than usual. "Harga beras naik la boss", that's the expected answer from the mamak. The total bill for your standard meal will cost you more, isn't it? If food industry uses SST, the consumption rate won't be 15%, right? Just do simple maths, drive through your neighbourhood area, do a quick survey on number of food stalls, restaurants, food joints etc2. Just come up with a gross figure of people who order rice variants, from nasi goreng, nasi campur, etc2, & you'll definitely know that those 15% does not come from the food industry. Think for yourself....
We need more radical policy to nurture and cultivate our local agri industry. We should at least be self-sufficient in certain product, while maintaining good balance between importing and exporting our own agri products. Having read Dr Amin Mahir Abdullah, the Agri-business and Management Policy laboratory head for UPMs Agriculture and food Policy Research Institute (IKDPM) comments on the newly developed strain, MRQ74 or “Mas Wangi” in 2005 which is on par with the Thai fragrant rice, is considered "not being able to compete in the market" by our local market or by other authority is very sickening and heart wrenching. To change market perspective on local products is tough, but if the regulation is there to highlight our product more in the market rather than the imports, by simple economic law we can deduced that we will definitely see an increased in sales for local products. Saturate the market, numb the customer with ads or increased the visibility factor on the local products, make it mandatory for hypermarkets to display it, educate them, do whatever you like under the sun to increase the sale, then one day we will see 'Mas Wangi' as something we will buy over the imports. Don't you think?
Monday, April 14, 2008
I'm Back!
I'm Back! After a long hiatus from photography, I'm definitely back from long hibernation. Yes, I've migrated to Kwanon, which is hmmm...OK la, not bad. But L lens? One word to describe it..Fantastico! Seriously, give it a try, & you'll appreciate it. I know I am.
For the rest of my daily photo bullshit...you can view it HERE
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