KARACHI, Sept 15: The city has a number of roadside eateries besides fruit, vegetable and meat markets in every other locality though hardly any of these take care of hygiene and food inspectors seem least bothered about checking the unhygienic practices.

With garbage and rubbish all around, the city not only gives an ugly look but also sees an outbreak of viral infections and other diseases every now and then. The recent spread of conjunctivitis, an eye ailment, is also attributed to the prevailing unhygienic conditions by ophthalmologists. However, the city administration seems comfortable without doing anything about the removal of filth.

A visit to the food corners located on Burnes Road (now Mohammad Bin Qasim Road), Shahrah-i-Iraq, Empress Market, Bohri Bazaar, Tariq Road and Hassan Square area shows that several restaurants have encroached upon footpaths, service lanes and pavements by placing chairs and tables on them. The customers are served food there despite the fact that sewage, which continues to gush out from choked gutters, often remains accumulated along the footpaths.

Etiquettes and other matters take secondary importance when the food is available at cheap rate to customers. Hence, both the waiters and the customers throw the leftovers on pavements and lanes with ease in total disregard for the environmental concerns. The whole area around such outlets turns virtually into a landfill site littered with leftovers and garbage.

Referring to the menace of overflowing gutters in the vicinity of eateries and local restaurants, sources in the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board said that the sewers at such places often got choked because the leftover food along with the discarded crockery were thrown into manholes. They said the manholes near the food outlets were generally uncovered for the very purpose.

Unhygienic practices are not restricted to food outlets alone, as meat sellers and fruit vendors too openly flout the mandatory rules of placing nets on the commodities, thus exposing the citizens to serious health hazards. Meat sellers are doing a roaring business in Lea Market, Guru Mandir’s KBN Market, Tariq Road’s commercial area, Federal B’ Area, Liaquatabad Market, Nazimabad’s Gole Market, Karimabad, Burnes Road and at roadside stalls set up in different localities.

In Saddar, a large number of pushcarts selling fruits and other eatables have occupied two lanes of Mir Karam Ali Talpur Road, submerged by sewage.