By Aabigayle McIntosh

The safety of the general public during the remainder of the Carnival season, from a health standpoint, is foremost on the minds of the bosses at the Central Board of Health (CBH)

CBH is tasked with maintaining sanitation and health and safety standards in the country- and they will be hiring additional staffers to ensure this can be done.

More than 100 people are to be deployed to ensure that food safety, general health, and sanitation matters are handled.

Principal Public Health Supervisor, Julienne Mannix, said the department is seeking to ensure that there are no food-borne or other diseases affecting members of the public attending the various carnival events.

CBH is responsible for clearing the Antigua Recreation Grounds (ARG) where most of the activities are taking place for the 2023 festival.

They will also be cleaning the city streets which will come alive with revelry from the different parades and T-shirt mas.

In preparation for this, they have held food safety training for people looking to engage in the sale of food to ensure they are properly certified and received their food safety badges.

“We have had our food safety training this month specifically geared towards those individuals who will be involved in the preparation, handling, and sale of food during the carnival.

“We also had an engagement with the vendors to explain what our public health inspectors will be looking for when they carry out their inspections during the shows,” she explained during a recent interview.

Looking more at Carnival, the team will be dispatching Public Health Inspectors who will ensure that those in the food handling business wear a badge to certify that they completed the training.

They will also be looking for hot and cold food devices, hand washing, and personal protection equipment.

The inspectors will also be monitoring the sale of food within ARG and other highly populated areas.

As it relates to cleaning, a work team will start the city streets from around 2:00 a.m. each day and run until the city is clean for the start of the workday.