Rotten rice and chicken in Vietnamese canteens set off alarm bells
A thousand workers protest in Gia Tân after discovering rotten seasonings and cooking oil in their canteens’ kitchen. Workers at the Tnhh Tm-Dv-Sx plant in in Đồng Nai province complain of headache, blurred vision, abdominal pain and fainting. In Bình Dương, the authorities seize and destroy five tonnes of rotten pig.
Hanoi (AsiaNews) – The number of poisoning cases in workplace canteens is increasing in Vietnam with rotten rice and chicken topping the menu.
Despite proclamations by the country’s communist regime about greater controls and safety measures, Vietnamese workers continue to be worried about what they are served during their lunch break.
One of the latest episodes took place Tuesday in Gia Tân, a municipality in Gia Viễn District (Ninh Bình province), when about a thousand workers were served unappetising chicken with rice.
As they do every day, the employees of the Great Global International Limited Company went to the canteen at 11.30 am for their lunch. However, according to reports, no one had the stomach to try what was dished out as it gave off a pungent odour.
When some went into the kitchen to complain to the staff and check the food, they found that the cooks had used dirty seasoning and cooking oil.
The workers also caught some cooking staff secretly and hurriedly trying to load six sacks of frozen pork meat into the lorry carrying frozen chicken in an attempt to dispose of it outside the plant. "Most chickens had no wings, no legs or head,” some witnesses said.
Given the situation, “We held the kitchen staff, whilst we called the authorities and asked them not to work with these people anymore."
Bình, 26, works at the Tnhh Tm-Dv-Sx plant in the southern province of Đồng Nai. He cannot forget the day he was poisoned by the food served in the canteen.
"The meal of that day,” he lamented. “The rice smelled bad but we all tried to eat it. We had to regain strength to work in the afternoon! After about an hour, however, we began to experience headaches, blurred vision, abdominal pain and fainting.”
Recently, provincial authorities in Bình Dương, southern Vietnam, found and destroyed five tonnes of rotten pig.
Now tens of thousands of local workers have become nervous, wondering how much rotten, infected and contaminated meat they might have eaten in the past.
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