Dubai Municipality closes 83 food establishments

Dubai: The municipality temporarily shut down 83 food establishments during the first half of this year as a result of some highly dangerous violations.

The action was put into practice in order to enhance technical and health standards in the food production and handling sector, The exercise allows managements of the establishments to sort out their issues and violations through meeting the technical specifications and the necessary healthy rules set by the civic body.

Engineer Sultan Ali Al Taher, head of the food inspection department at Dubai Municipality, said the municipality received 1,186 complaints during the first half of 2012, of which 95 per cent were followed up on.

Al Taher said that the other five per cent of complaints were not followed up due to vagueness in customer complaints in describing or specifying the food establishment. He said that almost 49 per cent of the complaints were well-founded, while 51 per cent of them were not. He also confirmed that the number of complaints had decreased compared with the previous years through the commitment of most food establishments to maintain health requirements and through the application of best practices.