Daily Times

LAHORE: The Punjab Food Authority (PFA) is translating its laws and rules and regulations into Urdu. An Urdu language draft of the Punjab Pure Food Regulations of 2017 will be available in the market and at the PFA website by the end of the month, PFA Director General Noorul Amin Mengal told Daily Times on Thursday.

He said he hoped availability of the Urdu version would help businesses better adhere to the authority’s laws, rules and regulations.

“I have been directed officers concerned to expedite work on the matter,” he said.

Mengal noted that notices and pamphlets, brochures and other material circulated in the market for awareness raising purposes was already being produced in Urdu language.

In future, he said, the authority would also distribute booklets on specific aspects of food laws in Urdu language.

Speaking to Daily Times, Food vendors in various city neighbourhoods expressed ignorance about food laws, particularly the Punjab Pure Food Regulations of 2017 that guide the authority’s quality control efforts in the province.

They said if the PFA expected its safety standards to be followed it needed to make the rules and regulations available in a language easily accessible to those in the food sector.

“My workers and I cannot read a text written in Urdu language and the PFA expects them to be aware of its rules and regulations that are available only in English,” said a restaurant owner on Ferozpur Road.

He said he followed basic safety standards at his restaurant, but if there were specific instructions on some aspect of hygiene he would need to be told about that.

Vendors in the dairy sector, roadside restaurant operators and sweets shop owners were particularly vocal in their demand for availability of rules and regulations in a language accessible to them.

They praised the PFA for cracking down on those producing and selling unhygienic and adulterated food. They said that it was understandable to take punitive action against those who were violating safety standards knowingly. Those unaware of standards could not be expected to follow them entirely, he added.

The vendors welcomed the news that the PFA was translating the Pure Food Rules 2017 into Urdu. They hoped that the authority would take care to translate the rules using commonly used words.

In 2015, the Supreme Court of Pakistan had directed federal and provincial governments to adopt Urdu as the official language across the country.

Published in Daily Times, August 4^th 2017.