Understanding Challenges Faced By Street Food Vendors to Maintain Street Food Hygiene in Dhaka City

Abstract

In many parts of the world, particularly in the developing countries, street food vending also makes an important contribution to employment, household revenue and food security. While street foods are an important source of ready-to-eat nutrition and provides low cost meal for the urban poor population, the health risks possessed by such foods may outweigh their benefits. Dhaka city is the capital of Bangladesh and is one of the most densely populated cities of the world. At present Dhaka is the residence of approximately 14 million people and it has been estimated that there are around 2 million street food vendors currently engaged in food vending in the city. A few published reports on street food vendors in Dhaka suggests poor microbial quality of street food and bear the risk of transmitting enteric disease in the communities. Therefore the aim of this study is to explore the challenges faced by the street food vendors to maintain food hygiene while vending in Dhaka city. Semi structured interview approach was chosen for its suitability for exploring attitudes, values, beliefs and motives. The street food vendors were first categorized into four categories based on the food item they sell. All 26 interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed and content analysis with inductive coding was used to code the transcribed interview data. Qualitative, inductive coding methods were used to explore the challenges faced by the street food vendors to maintain street food safety while vending in Dhaka city. The study revealed that lack of education, training and experience and lack of infrastructural support all together acts as major challenges for these street food vendors to ensure food safety while vending in Dhaka city. The interviewed street food vendors gave their opinion that proper training about safe food handling and proper financial and infrastructural support like loans for starting a business, fixing a site for the street food vendors in different places of the city with all sorts of support available like supply of purified water, proper toilet facility and proper garbage disposal might be helpful to overcome the challenges faced by them to maintain hygiene of the food sold by them.