File picture used for representation only.
Doha: The Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) has raised concerns about wastage of food items by people. A senior official of the Ministry has urged consumers to change their behaviour to food habits to reduce food wastage.
Qatar has taken many steps to increase food production, now citizens and expatriates need to play their part in the government efforts to ensure food security, said Masoud Jarallah Al Marri, Director of MME's Food Security Department.
“I would like to send a message to consumers on the issue of food waste. The country has made tremendous efforts with the support of private sector for producing fresh food locally, now consumers have a big role to reduce food waste,” Al Marri said while speaking in a Qatar TV programme.
He said food wastage has been observed in large quantity at waste management centre and waste collection points of the municipalities.
The wastage of food comes at a time when the government is putting special focus to ensure food security. Huge quantity of food waste, collected from municipalities, is taken to the waste management centres. The Ministry has already integrated food waste management programme which aims at reducing food waste from the entire supply chain. Al Marri asked private sector to make more investments in food security projects especially in the field of food processing.
Speaking about the achievements of Qatar National Food Security Strategy 2018-23, Al Marri said: “A total of 37 projects were planned under the strategy. Many of them were launched in 2019 and 2020. The remaining will be implemented in coming years.”
He said 10 projects of greenhouses with the capacity of 21,000 tonnes of vegetables in a year and 10 projects for fattening of animals with the capacity of 50,000 animals in a year were launched already.
“The projects helped in raising self-sufficiency in the production of fresh milk to 106 percent, fresh chicken 127 percent, eggs 35 percent and vegetables 35 percent,” said Al Marri. He said the existing farms also have been activated to increase the produce with the support of the Ministry which provided 1,600 greenhouses, 1,700 net-houses, 100 hydroponic and 4 million boxes for marketing agricultural produce, fertilizers and many more.
