The eThekwini Municipality says it has a database of 4700 spaza shops currently issued with permits or licences to operate in various townships as municipalities across the country scramble to meet a 21-day window for re-registration.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced plans on Friday to address the recurring food-borne illnesses linked to pesticides (including the highly hazardous Terbufos) with a total of 890 reported incidents that have claimed the lives of at least 22 children across the country.
He said all spaza shops and other food handling facilities must be registered within the municipalities in which they operate within 21 days and that any shop that is not registered within the period and does not meet all health standards and requirements will be closed.
Municipalities, starting with Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, have to conduct door-to-door inspection campaigns targeting spaza shops and informal traders.
eThekwini Municipality’s spokesperson Gugu Sisilana said the issue of spaza shops has been on their radar and the City Council had approved the implementation of a strategic intervention to assist and empower local tuckshop owners in September.
She said the City’s informal economy (which includes street traders, spaza shops, informal manufacturing, informal panel shops and other home businesses) contributed approximately R55 billion to eThekwini’s GDP and employs about 260000 people.
“The City is currently conducting tuckshop inspections throughout the city to issue notices for non-compliance with health regulations.
“The inspections are conducted by a multidisciplinary team which includes Metro Police, SAPS, the Fire and Emergency Unit and Business Licensing.
“Anyone who wishes to open an accommodation, entertainment establishment or a food outlet in the city has to register with the City’s Business Licensing Unit,” Sisilana said.
She said business owners need to also apply for the Certificate of Acceptability (COA), which is a food business permit issued that governs general hygiene requirements for food premises, the transport of food and related matters.
“This certificate is for those who intend to store, distribute, prepare, transport or sell foodstuff intended for public consumption.”
Sisilana said a recent report tabled before Council’s executive committee found that many of the tuck shops have been “taken over by foreign nationals, leading to unfair competition with local tuckshops”.
“As a result, the sector is now dominated by foreign ownership, which has resulted in economic displacement, informal economy dynamics, influx of foreign nationals, compliance and legal issues, competition and market saturation, access to resources, community relations and cultural integration,” she said.
“The proposed strategic interventions aim to address challenges facing these establishments through a comprehensive support framework that includes stakeholder engagement, access to opportunities and capital, local ownership of township/rural markets, bulk buying programmes, leveraging foreign ingenuity, township and rural empowerment, and skills development and capacity building.”
Sisilana said this would include the review of the Informal Economy By-Laws and Compliance.
A multidisciplinary team in government met on Monday to discuss the inspection process of food handling facilities, manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers.
The team is made up of detectives from the SAPS, health officials, environmental inspectors, Department of Agriculture officials and officials from the National Consumer Commission.
Gerhard Verdoon, the director of Griffon Poison Information Centre, said there was now impetus to go out and recover the illegal poisons, including Terbufos, from street vendors and spaza shops.
“They will be taken off the streets and disposed off properly by incineration. We can all blame the government and say that this should have happened sooner but at least now we have some action.”
Verdoon said it was important to identify those who have large stocks of the pesticide.
“These are put into little packets and distributed to street vendors and the spaza shops and at those places people repack or manufacture food stuff which is one of the many avenues that lead to contamination.
“We are going to try and recover a couple tons of the stuff, which is commendable, but we need to find out where the large stocks of Terbufos are being harboured.”