Hygienic condition of local bakeries, scream

By Nchendzengang Tatah

Bread and pastries make up the diet of many Buea city dwellers. The ease with which they can be gotten and used for meals makes them preferred in this busy student and work town.

The hygienic conditions with which the dough is managed has not comfortably sat with denizens who have been exposed to the local bakeries across town.

“Most at times when I go there, the floor is always dirty,” an inhabitant said. She frequently visits a local bakery in her neighborhood to oven dry groundnuts.

“The bakers are always clothe in old dresses with an odour of accumulated sweat,” she went on to explain. Adding that, “they even use these dresses to mop their faces in the heat. Sweat sometimes drops into the dough.”

Some of the bakeries do not have comfortable environments with the least inch of cement floor. It is all muddy with regularly displaced baking bowls on the ground.

The hygienic conditions of handling the already baked bread sometimes is regrettable, another denizen lamented. He wondered how clean the surfaces are with traces of stale bread.

Recent assessments by the food security cluster reveal a worsening food security situation, particularly in the South-West region. In 2023, an estimated 420,591 people there were acutely food insecure. This number was projected to rise significantly in 2024.

Steadily, the need for government or local authorities to check the proliferation of food production houses in terms of their respect for health standards is needed medics have advised.