More health inspectors needed for PoS City—Lee Sing

The Port-of-Spain City Corporation is badly in need of additional public health inspectors, especially with gyro carts and Chinese restaurants popping up at every street and corner. Mayor Louis Lee Sing, at a statutory meeting of the Port-of-Spain City Corporation at City Hall on Thursday, said the 35 inspectors assigned to the city were woefully inadequate, and demanded twice the number.

He urged the Local Government Ministry to stop playing stingy and make funding available for 150 inspectors for Port-of-Spain. “The demands on this particular department continue to grow by the moment in Port-of-Spain. That 35 have been with us for the last 35 years,” he said.

“In the last 35 months the increase in demands on those employees have grown 35,000 times because there is a proliferation of new restaurants and all these officers to inspect food carts and other eating areas at calypso competitions and fetes across the city...it ain’t enough.”

Apart from ensuring food was safe for public consumption, Lee Sing said the inspectors had additional duties which included looking for bats. “These are the same officers who have to see if there are bats in the roofs,” he said. “It is the same 35 who have to check on dengue matters...They also support the building inspectorate and the engineering inspectorate,” he said.

“They are also responsible for policing people who sell food on the streets, whether it is nuts, palette, whatever. Everywhere there is a Chinese restaurant, with the growing Chinese population, and a new gyro hut.”