THE Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) outlets and Pizza Hut yesterday remained partially closed to facilitate what the local franchise holder has since described as ‘maintenance’ work.

This newspaper yesterday carried a headline story captioned: “KFC, Pizza Hut shut doors to address ‘sanitisation issues’ … foreign inspectors reportedly find roach and rat dung in flour storage… many say it should have happened a long time ago”.
The franchise holder has since issued a press release which did not refute the claims of this publication but mentioned that the company is committed to the highest service standards. The release added that the company had voluntarily closed the doors of its fast food outlets.
As stated in our initial article, the company did confirm that the outlets were inspected but did not specify when and by whom and would only say that it passed the inspections and will be reopening soon.
Yesterday when this publication visited the fast food restaurants it was observed that their doors were still shut tight and were only being opened to facilitate entry to employees who, like on Tuesday, turned up for their afternoon shifts.
While it is not clear if the ‘maintenance’ works were fully completed and the restaurants were in a condition to prepare meals for customers, this publication observed that the various locations were conducting sales through their delivery windows.
As on Tuesday, this publication tried in vain to contact franchise holder Deo Singh to seek clarification on the decision to sell customers through the delivery windows while the outlets kept their doors closed.
Following the publication of the story in yesterday’s edition of this newspaper, several persons telephoned to vent their approval of the story, stating that they had the experience of dining and seeing rats and roaches scurrying about at Pizza Hut on Vlissengen Road.
One man said that following a wedding sometime ago, he and some friends and family members stopped at the location to dine and a roach ran across their table into their box of pizza before making off.
This incident was reportedly brought to the attention of the supervisor on duty who apologized and begged the man not to go to the media since, according to him, he indicated that he was going to the media with the story since it was a very embarrassing situation for him as he had overseas guests at the time.
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