Durban — A campaign to rid the Big 5 Hlabisa Local Municipality in northern KwaZulu-Natal of expired goods sold by unscrupulous tuck shop owners has intensified following the death of a child after allegedly consuming chips.
Big 5 Hlabisa Local Municipality mayor Comfort Khumalo raised his concern during the official opening of Simunye Crèche in Mqobokazi, near Mbazwana, recently.
Khumalo said the campaign would hopefully help prevent shops owned by people from other African countries from selling products that have passed their sell-by dates.
Khumalo urged community members to be wary of when and where their children buy goods.
Khumalo said this was becoming a huge problem as they kept on losing the lives of innocent children.
“We started our first campaign on October 30 and plan on continuing to inspect businesses selling perishable goods in local areas.
“Our primary goal is to win this battle because we can’t just sit and do nothing while lives claimed by these shops rise every day. Tuck shops selling expired items should be completely shut down,” said Khumalo.
In a statement, the South African government said that the department through its Food Control and Environmental Health sections, had been working closely with other stakeholders to raise public awareness about the dangers of consuming counterfeit and expired food products.
“The country has a total number of 1 712 Environmental Health Practitioners, spread across 44 districts and eight metropolitan municipalities, serving a population of 62 million South Africans, which translates into one health inspector for every 36 000 people.
“This means efforts to prevent the production and sale of counterfeit and expired foodstuffs detrimental to human health cannot be left solely in the hands of food inspectors, but it should be everyone’s business,” said the statement.
One of the concerned residents, Thandiwe Mkhwanazi, said their main challenge is that shops owned by foreign nationals sell their items at cheaper prices.
“We live in a deep rural area that is far from town and our livelihood depends on these shops. We really need the authorities to urgently intervene in the matter,” she said.
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