The Madinah health department has denied that one of its hospitals employs a worker cooking rotten meat for patients.

This comes in the wake of the police finding huge quantities of rotting meat inside the homes of expatriate workers, including a cook employed at Wadi Al-Far’a Hospital, according to a report in a local publication recently.

Col. Fahd bin Amer Al-Ghanam, spokesman of the Madinah Police, said police recently raided a home and arrested nine workers for violating residency regulations.

“During the campaign, the police found a fridge inside the room of one worker containing 200 kg of rotten meat stored in very poor conditions,” said Al-Ghanam.

When police officers asked the worker about the meat, he said it belonged to a friend of the same nationality working as a cook at the hospital. He said the cook had asked him to keep the meat in his fridge because his fridge was out of order.

When the police summoned the cook and inspected his home, they found rotten meat inside his broken fridge. Al-Ghanam said the cook prepares meals for the patients at the hospital.

The Madinah health department’s director, Hamid Al-Sahli, said the report was not true. He said the police had arrested a worker working for a catering firm who was living with the cook.

The food seized belonged to the worker and not the cook, he said. He urged journalists to report accurately because their articles affect the lives of people.

Meanwhile, the police arrested five people in Al-Akhal suspected of being involved in assault.