Tourism and Arts Minister Sylvia Masebo has called for uplifting of hygiene standards in African Quinine and food preparations during the 20th session of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) General Assembly next month to give delegates a memorable experience.
Ms Masebo noted visitors in many countries were usually discouraged to sample locally produced foodstuffs due to hygienic concerns in the manner and environments in which such delicious cuisines were prepared and served.
She said it was important that hygiene standards were uplifted as it was not secret that foreign and local visitors had growing tendencies to sample and enjoy local cuisines wherever they travel.
Ms Masebo was speaking at Livingstone Lodge in the tourist capital on Friday afternoon during the graduation ceremony of the UNWTO General Assembly training in African Quinines and food preparations.
Sylvia Professional Catering trained several Livingstone women and they graduated after they were trained on how to prepare African Quinines and other foodstuffs in readiness for the UNWTO General Conference which would be co-hosted in Livingstone and Victoria Falls town from August 24 to 29, 2013.
The training course covered personal hygiene, cultural value of food entrepreneurship, customer care and other significant aspects of the catering business including practical food preparations.
“The visitors, both local and foreign, to the UNWTO General Assembly on the Zambian side of the Victoria Falls are your visitors.
It is therefore paramount for you to realize that the way you receive, treat, and more importantly cater for the visitors has telling effects on the general prospects of your business activities, individually and collectively,” Ms Masebo said.
She said the Government found it fit to help build Livingstone women’s capacities in attracting, caring and cooking for the visitors both during and after the UNWTO General Assembly.
“Please know that government is currently reviewing the tourism policy and some of the key prospects under review include local participation in the supply chain of tourism and hospitality products in Zambia,”
she said.
Speaking at the same function, Sylva Professional Catering managing director Sylva Banda thanked Government for giving her an opportunity to train the women in African Quisines and other food preparations.
Ms Banda declared the women ready for the cooking job during and beyond the UNWTO General Assembly.
Livingstone Member of Parliament Lawrence Evans urged the graduating women to consider opening their own restaurants.
The main objective of the training course was to give deliberate capacity to suppliers of indigenous and local cuisines during and after the UNWTO General Assembly.
Good Works Masebo let’s build our people for them to effectively participate in these income generating functions. This should be spread to capture a lot more women as a way of empowering them in various districts- tourism is very where in the country where us locals go visiting. My last visit at chishimba falls and Samfya left us starved until we got back to Kasama and Mansa respectively. Work with the local council, community welfare teams so as to create Jobs in communities. Above all dont just think of foreigners as tourist even us Zambians are traveling for work and we always greate time for site seeing and this leaves Kwacha in the local communities.
Nga nipa kapiri mposhi all you hear from vendors is umumbu or egi low (egg roll) if you loo at that egi low, the York has even changed to gray, but they still want you to buy!!
We are generally a dirty people, look at the state of our towns and cities. Mountains of uncollected garbage greets us and we go about things like nothing is wrong. We love dressing and looking great. That’s fine, but how about our towns, our streets, parks even our homes etc
Kano fye ama by-elections yena money is always there but services like public toilets, water & sanitation, housing, health, education…..well there is no money.
Zambians stand up and demand more and better services from your govt.
Kwena Aromatica wampwa kunseko, yani, i remember those trips, elo ninshi nakabalika bad! i cant go on recounting am breaking down pano as i type, really there is no place like home, ine i miss kumo nulukungu, kankungwe, i would love to see that again, it’s excrutiaingly hot kuno but i cant breath, kumwesu when hot you breath, elo amenshi yamuli Jo saka kuti nayanwa! See now Aromatic what you have done, mpaka missing home nama description yobe, anyway cool.
hhahahahahah… minister of tourism,, beating down your own instead of encouraging them,,, go to vietinam or thailand and see that food on their streets,, very unhygienic but men!! those people are so proud of their food and support it to death….and i tell you what… tourists love that unhygienic street vietinam and thai food,,,, is it because they use mpili mpili alot or what???,
I totally agree with you! Same with the Mandazi’s sold on the streets in Daressalaam!!! hahaha!
Agree with you gentlemen. Some countries are proud of their way of life. But Zambia wants to serve tourist with Pizza, Chicken & Chips, with Fanta instead of
Hygienic roasted ground nuts, charcoal roasted maize, cassava, Mango, Masuku, from local brew pick-out distilled Kachasu (just samples!!).
I don’t think Masebo is beating down her own and is only encouraging them to upgrade their standards. Look at her comment as she commends the food for being delicious but is just prepared unhygienically in an unhygienic environment.
but why are they preparing quinines? are people coming sick already or what? masebo why do you beat down your own?
Call a spade a spade,no need to deny the obvious.The truth is our hygiene standards are badly wanting and i too have avoided many food vendors on health grounds.I don’t blame our visitors for their hesistance.
Ba Masebo is she feeling very cold or an exaggeration of coldness? Look at the gentlemen;they are not very dressed.
Ine shocked nabomfwilako nechibe, bushe is it that ice cold in Zed this time? Anyway we wouldnt know with this extreme weather we are enduring nowadays, you can end up saying something meanwhile it’s winter in Zed.
Please edit this “Quinine” thing. For goodness sake Cuisine and Quinine are worlds apart.
right!! i also did not notice that,,, Quinine should makwala a malaria
Ah! I was thinking it strange that people are producing their own quinine…thank you for clearing up the matter.
Ba Masebo, all food eaten in Zambia is locally produced except for a few foodstuffs imported by Zambeef (and others like Shoprite) and believed by the post-Mumembe to contain some chemicals. Did she mean to say locally cooked or local cuisine like chikanda, impwa, etc.? Is she suggesting that the delegates should only eat imported food and/or local food cooked by hotels/lodges with a “good reputation”? I bet no tourist will eat from these lodges. Sad for a minister of mis-tourism to make such utterances. Any wise tourist will avoid all local foods even from sylva catering, just to be on the safe side. That is why this woman is always booked at Sun Hotels, she thinks local lodges have hygiene issues…
Why such a negative heading?? Why not rearrange the very same words to read “Training in hygiene to encourage visitors sample locally produced foodstuffs”. A positive attitude is always very important if we want to get positive results. Research has shown that over 80% of what we accomplish in life is due to positive attitude. So remember a glass of water is half full, NOT half empty.
Good call Cactus.
You mean the tourists/visitors coming are all blind, let them choose. Why all this? Is this the first time there is coming visitors to Livingstone?
Our Zambia has a lot of germs and there is only one common source of these disease causing bacteria. Poor sanitation,
Congratulations on the Cuisine and Food Preparations course graduation ceremony ladies ! Wish you all the best the best for the future. I commend you Silvia and Sylvia for targeting to empower our women folk , for they are culturally charged with taking care of our households and families !
maybe she should be tasted first…
what happened tp “Local Is Better!” This minister is a fool, instead of encouraging and educating our locals on food hygiene visitors she’s advising visitors to avoid them. Though UNWTO is an opportunity for our people in the host city to present a truly Zambian way of life not the one am sure will be imported from South Africa, Zambia is not South Africa please. We buy and chew maize by the road side, we’ve got boys roasting goat meat known as Muchopo at most drinking spots, you can also eat Nshima from the market if you on a budget and not forgetting you can buy soft drinks whilst on our local buses not forgetting chewing gum.
Mrs. Masebo, be proud to be Zambian, our way of life is what it is. If you embarrassed with it in any form, you are not deserved to hold that tourism post…
Quinine!! Ba LT, report correctly na imwe. Did you mean Cuisine???
This fashion awe sure ba Sylvia wearing winter boots in Livingstone, Zambia your feet must stink in the evening.
She has a point; just because food is traditional does not mean it should be prepared in unhygienic conditions. The basics — the cook should be bathe and smell fresh, the pots and serving dishes, utensil should all be and look clean.
Let me remind you that all food is local somewhere, i.e. pizza, shawarma, burgers and fried chicken were all local to their respective places. But over time, we have learned to share their recipeis prepare them hygienically. We need to do that same for our foods; chikanda, impwa, ifi sashi, ifi shimu, chimpapila, katapa, bondwe, even mbeba, kapenta, dry fish, inswa, inshonkonono.
Hygiene is supreme and lacking in Zed.
#OneZambia
I wouldnt mind sampling Nshima, ulembwe, zambian chicken iya ma layas, kikikikiki, very tasty by the way, that chicken i have never tasted anywhere, katapa, chimpampila, bamiya, beans mixed with delele, iye choli…, all zambian foods kuntu nalya ubwali mpaka bwankola! so ba ms Masebo if you have a visitor like me, i dont think your warning would be ignored but i would eat anyway.
Cindy wanjipaya! I can’t stop laughing. You just reminded me of Nakonde. I don’t know where you are but here in the U.S you can get some of the stuff you’re missing like katapa, impwa and you can make your own beans mixed with delele though it won’t taste the same. Actually Congolese people and West Africans make very good katapa. Really tasty.
So the Livingstone MP is now fit?has he been to parliament now since we heard he was unwell and has never been to parliament since being elected?
spellcheck banda pliz, can we eat QUININES? lol
Hmmm, on one hand, I agree with some of the bloggers who say Masebo should be promoting local foods and vendors. On the other hand, I think a campaign to raise awareness of sanitation, and some enforcement of the fact (not jail time, maybe just losing the right to sell food in an area), and maybe some support for these small roadside businesses would help. I remember taking munkoyo near the Arcades bus stop one time, and the cups that people used were not washed with detergent, they were rinsed in a bucket of water fye.
Not feeling very clever today – so the training body is called Sylvia Professional Cleaning? And this Sylvia Professional cleaning company taught cuisine?
They could mandate attendance, and only vendors that attend are allowed to sell their wares to delegates. Presentation counts a lot. A grubby newspaper shaped into a cone and filled with nshaba will not do.
Wares should obviously be authentic Zambian food/fruit. DO NOT (embarrassingly) try to mimic food they’ve left behind in their countries. Just do Zambian food presented well.
Presumably this is the VIP lounge, as I don’t imagine the airport is peppered with leather chairs for public use.
I’m gonna be real snobbish here – the leather chairs, the tourism minister, the unpolished floor, the cheap-looking winter boots, the expression on the minister’s face – they wouldn’t make me feel important. I’d feel like I’d slid 500 notches down the socio-economic totem pole.
There. I said it. Sue me if you like.
Since when did lay persons start preparing quinine? On the other hand, the minister is very right by emphasizing hygiene during food preparations. She is right because the quality of food should goes beyond taste, food has to be clean too. There is no reason why our beautiful and clean minister should embrace unhygienic conditions just because other countries serve their food in unhygienic environment. Thanks to Silvia professional catering for training some locals in food preparations. Last but not the least, learn to make other people feel good about themselves-she looked fabulous. It’s cold in Zambia by the way!
Analysit from Tokyo naiwe! Why malabishi so?Naiwe Chiduku on A horse, listen both of you: Sylvia Banda has been running her company, group of companies in fact, for 28 years single handedly. She has done some pioneering work in the food industry for so long and has been recognised the world over for her innovativeness, and hard work. She recently introduced the ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to an international forum ; she has continued to receive invitations to speaking speak on food at world fora. Even Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation at Winlock has had her as a special speaker – just Google “Sylvia Banda’ or “Sylva Food Solutions” and be amazed by the volume of information on her activities and achievements. She is so good at her work with women GRZ honoured. You louts!
Keep your hair on, I thought it was Sylvia Masebo’s company.
I don’t see a problem with Masebo wearing winter boots in Zambia as it’s winter right now in the Southern hemisphere of which Zambia is part of. All you want is to say in Zambia its cold season and western countries its winter. My understanding is winter and cold season is the same thing. Moreover Livingstone is very cold than most parts of zambia during winter.
Does this mean the writer can not spell cuisine, trained in African quinines and African quisines, what is that?