Dr. Edward Ackah-Nyamike Jnr, President of the Ghana Hotels Association, said that hotels that run restaurants and are registered with the Ghana Tourism Authority are inspected once a year.
Hotels are given advance notice of the inspection, so "you'd assume that every hotel will be at its best when they await the Food and Drugs Authority," he says.
"What we don't generally get is random inspections that may catch people off guard or catch hotels off guard to see what they do when the FDAs aren't expecting them," he stated on JoyNews' PM Express.
His remark came in reaction to a statement by Nana Yaw Akwada, the Executive Director of the Bureau of Public Safety, about the frequency of food safety inspections by the proper regulatory agencies in order to avoid a repetition of the Marwako food poisoning episode.
He stated that the FDA's inadequate regulatory practices have led to food sector participants resorting to self-regulation, which he believes is ineffective in guaranteeing the highest standards of food safety in the country.
Despite the fact that the inspection occurs just once a year, Dr. Ackah-Nyamike Jnr. stated that it is quite comprehensive and considers other aspects aside from the safety of the food at the hotels.
"The beautiful thing about that annual inspection, though," he explained, "is that it's not only about the food; they have other standards as well." For example, they anticipate frequent fumigation, but not just any fumigation, but fumigation by a business that has been properly registered with the Environmental Protection Agency.
Then they want you to have the EPA license as well. They next examine your records, the source of your food items, the cleanliness certifications or public health certificates acquired by your teaching staff from the Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies, as well as your Standard Operating Procedures.
"They check at your records, as well as your staff's washrooms, visitors' washrooms, access to detergents for cleaning the food preparation facilities, and clean water." They look at cleanliness, how you dispose of your trash, and everything else.
"So you can sure that throughout that period of inspection, all of these items will be scrutinized, and every hotel will be on high alert." But, as I mentioned, the difficulty is that after that inspection, there will be a year gap until the next one, and it's impossible to predict what will happen in that time," he added.
He was, however, positive that hotels across the country were upholding the greatest food safety standards because their reputations were on the line.