Team Goemkarponn
PONDA: After seeing food contaminated with maggots being served, students from the Ponda Education Society (PES) in Farmagudi, together with the student council and ABVP, compelled the college administration to close the cafeteria.
Until a new organization can be found to manage the facility, canteen operations have been halted as of Thursday.
Students have been complaining about food provided at the canteen being contaminated with maggots for a number of months. The student council wrote to the principal in December 2024, requesting that the canteen operator be held accountable.
About 300 students signed the letter, which claimed that the canteen was serving unsanitary food, but the college administration at the time did nothing about it.
Students decided to take matters into their own hands after a similar occurrence occurred this week. They held a demonstration on college property with the ABVP’s help, calling for the canteen to be shut down right away.
The canteen operator has been operating the company for the last four years without an FDA license, according to Rajas Jaywant, ABVP-Goa’s organizing secretary.
About 2,000 persons, including staff and students from other PES campus institutions like Pharmacy, B.Ed., and Higher Secondary, were fed by the canteen.
“The canteen has been operating in a completely unhygienic manner, with food infested with maggots on multiple occasions,” Jaywant claimed. We had to protest because the management did nothing in spite of our repeated protests.
The management decided to close the canteen until a replacement operator could be found after the protest. To guarantee that appropriate hygienic standards are upheld, students have insisted that the new operator secure an FDA license.
