Spring cleaning to take 21 days

A 21-day year-end clean-up campaign across the city started yesterday to welcome the Year of the Dragon.

Food and Environmental Hygiene Department staff will step up cleaning at public facilities under its management, including markets, cooked food centers, hawker bazaars, public toilets and refuse collection points during the campaign.

Sites where illegal rubbish dumping and other public cleanliness offenses take place will come in for special attention.

Staff will also conduct mosquito and rodent prevention and control operations, targeting places such as old tenement buildings, streets, back alleys, village houses and construction sites according to conditions in each district.

Health staff members will also step up inspections, cleaning and disinfection of communal areas and facilities in markets and remind stall tenants to clean up thoroughly.

In view of the upcoming implementation of municipal solid waste charging taking effect on April 1, the department will assess the actual situation and consider increasing the number of temporary junk collection points in each district for residents to discard large items.

Cleaning as well as garbage and bulky waste collection services at refuse collection points in all districts will also be enhanced.

To ensure the cleanliness of public places, the department will continue to strengthen enforcement action and issue fixed penalty notices, a spokesman said.

The spring cleaning started as the Centre for Food Safety announced test results of the first phase of a recently completed seasonal food surveillance project on Lunar New Year staples.

In the first phase of the project, different types of Lunar New Year food, including steamed puddings, fried dumplings, candies and around 420 more products, were collected from retailers for chemical and microbiological tests as well as nutrition content analysis.

The test results were satisfactory except for one sample - a prepackaged fresh bean curd sticks.

A spokesman said follow-up action has been taken, including informing the vendor of the finding, ordering a stop on sales, a recall and a trace of the source of the food item.

The trade was urged to abide by laws and regulations in preparing food, follow good manufacturing practices and use permitted additives only appropriately.

Retailers should source food from reliable suppliers and conduct quality checks of incoming materials and end products to ensure ingredients used are within legal standards.

Consumers are advised to buy food from reliable retailers with good hygiene conditions and pay attention to containers and staff hygiene when they buy loose-packed foods.