‘Big cleaning day’ planned at Parliament canteen after rat incident
The Parliament will hold a “big cleaning day” event in its canteen next week after a photo of a rat scuttling along a food tray went viral on the Internet when it was posted on Thursday. (See how big the rat is inside the story)
Officials yesterday inspected the Parliament club’s canteen and found lots of garbage lying around. Now they are preparing to implement stricter cleaning measures, starting with the special event.
The Dusit District Office will lead the cleaning event and will be responsible for increasing the frequency of garbage collection and regularly cleaning drainpipes around the Parliament, which is located in its district.
The district office will also send experts to lecture food sellers in the canteen about hygiene.
Yesterday, officials conducted contamination testing on food and containers at the food hall and collected some specimens to take away for examination. The results will be submitted to the Parliament later.
Sorasak Pienwej, secretarygeneral of the Office of the House of Representatives, admitted that the district had found rats in the area, which came through the drainpipes.
The hygieneboosting measures would start next week, he said, adding that the Parliament might also hire private companies to collect garbage in addition to the services from the district office.
He said his office had not ignored the food hygiene problem and would discuss the matter next week to find solutions. Immediate issues would be taken care of as soon as possible, but any major renovation might be subject to budgetary considerations, Sorasak added.
