The President of the Ghana Hotels Association, Dr. Edward Ackah-Nyamike Jnr, has revealed that hotels which operate restaurants and are registered with the Ghana Tourism Authority are inspected once a year.

According to him, the hotels are given prior notice to prepare towards the inspection “so you’d expect that every hotel will be at its best when they expect the Food and Drugs Authority.”

“What we usually don’t get is those random inspection that could take people off-guard or to take the hotels off-guard to see what they do when they’re not expecting the FDAs,” he said on JoyNews’ PM Express.

His comment was in response to a statement made by the Executive Director of the Bureau of Public Safety, Nana Yaw Akwada, concerning the frequency of food safety inspections by the appropriate regulatory bodies to prevent a repeat of the Marwako food poisoning incident.

He noted that the poor regulatory practice of the FDA has led to players in the food industry resorting to self-regulation, which he says, is not the best in regards to ensuring the highest standards of food safety in the country.

Dr. Ackah-Nyamike Jnr. Stated that despite the inspection occurring just once in a year, it is very thorough and takes into consideration other issues aside from the safety of food in the hotels.

He said, “The good thing about that annual inspection though is that it’s not just related to the food, but they also have other requirements. For instance, they expect to see some regular fumigation and not just any fumigation at all, but fumigation by a company that has duly registered with the Environmental Protection Agency.

“And then also they also expect that you also have that EPA license itself. Then they look at your records, the source of your food ingredients, the hygiene certificates or the public health certificates obtained by your teaching staff from the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies and then they also require that you have your Standard Operating Practice or Procedures.

“They look at your records, they look at even washrooms for your staff, washroom for guests, access to detergents for cleaning the food preparation areas and also access to clean water. They look at sanitation, how you dispose of your refuse, they look at all those things.

“So for that period of inspection you can bet that all these things are checked and every hotel will be on alert. But the challenge as I indicated is after that inspection there is a whole year gap where the next inspection will take place and as to what happens between those periods it’s very difficult to tell,” he said.

He was, however, optimistic that hotels in the country were keeping the highest of standards of food safety as they had their reputation on the line.