Ayesha mumtaz punjab food biography

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They would misbehave and refuse to comply, forcing her to deal with them with an iron hand. Thus her nomination for the Herald Person of the Year for 2015; hence her status as a one-woman wrecking ball.

Asked whether protecting the culinary concerns of 100 million people was overwhelming, she smiles. After passing her Provincial Civil Services (PCS) examination, she started her career as a staff officer for the District Coordination Officer (DCO) Lahore.

Inside, a lone staffer sits by a door that reads “Director (Operations)”. No, he is looking at service structures and system transfers.”

Nor does she sally forth without trained food inspectors in tow.

During an iftar raid at a famous coffee chain (her team is as likely to storm in at midnight as it is at high noon), Mumtaz discovered expired syrup bottles from 2012.

A career civil servant since 2001, she landed in the unheard of PFA in June 2014. Unlike today’s public servants with their mile-long motorcades, Mumtaz is content with her sparse office and its blank walls. The director and her food safety inspectors were surrounded.

Mumtaz did not fear them — for, she tells me, she fears only God.

“Any jackals that think they are lions, step forward,” she called out. That is where they start and end…posh places think they are above the law.”

Feeling the heat of her fury, the LRA has tried to add more ammunition to its armoury: that the restaurant boys are all honourable taxpayers, and that the director is no food technologist.

“Madam Ayesha Mumtaz is usually in the field,” he says, and as much is obvious: she is not your usual desk warrior. [This plea] is an indirect admission [of guilt].”

Much younger than our vintage-era babus (those that employ human keyboards on government salaries), Mumtaz understands connectivity and is hampered by its loss.

During one reported inspection, she asked the management of an eatery whether it used the deep freezer to bury the dead.

Much of her blitz is courtesy the (otherwise nervy) Punjab government: Mumtaz has carte blanche, with “not a single phone call” of intervention from the famously food-centric Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PMLN).

Yet whatever the Raiwind Rulebook says, could this become another cliché of individual over institution?

They represent the same four places on M M Alam (Road). “One must have the audacity to confront these people. “I feel thrilled.” This seems like coming from an old world zealot but that may be missing the wider picture. She rose to fame after raiding various restaurants and hotels to ensure the quality of food and hygiene. Besides her belief in the divine, experience has helped: as the first female district officer at Lari Adda, the famous bus stop in Lahore, Mumtaz faced off the trucker mafia.

Pop culture turned it into a faceless, fathomless dread. Now, after a 14-year career in civil service, she has earned the rather unceremonious reputation of being ‘the lady who does not listen to sifarish or entertain requests for favour’.

Yet, she doesn’t agree with the parallel drawn on social media and sometimes in official meetings between her and the fearless police officer in Bollywood smash hit Dabangg.

“Do you think you need to test food in a laboratory if it stinks?