Officials during a meeting, yesterday, to study the setting up of an ‘early warning national center for food’.
Environmental Operations Department and Al Rayyan Municipality at the Ministry of Municipality and Environment held a meeting yesterday to study the setting up of an ‘early warning national center for food’ which will immediately send warnings on food items and alert to retailers.
The meeting studied the suggestion provided by Al Rayyan Municipality and also discussed how to implement it. The meeting spoke about the need to benefit from Zaheeb (ready) services introduced by Al Rayyan. Al Rayan municipality has already introduced a system to monitor global warnings issued against food items and inform local outlets simultaneously.
It assigned a special team to monitor all international and local websites to find if any warning has been issued against food items. If warnings are issued, the team will inform health control section to take the necessary procedures.
The service is called Zaheeb (ready) and through it, they contact supermarkets through WhatsApp or email and send messages in English advising to remove the food product temporarily from shelves.
In an earlier interview with Al Rayan Municipality, a senior official said, that, “The new service makes work easier, as through one message we control the market, instead of informing every supermarket individually.” “We have the contact numbers of all supermarkets in Al Rayyan area. We communicate with them and they also coordinate with us. The messages are sent only in English because most of them speak the language. We introduced this service to ensure the safety of people,” the official said.
The meeting was attended by Mubarak Sultan Al Dawsari, Environmental operations Department; Rashed Saeed Al Nuaimi, Al Rayyan Muncipality Director; and Majesd Burhan Zaydan, Health Control Section head at Al Rayyan Municipality and other officials from the ministry. It also discussed to hold meetings with concerned authorities like Ministry of Public health.
