Dear Editor
The Democratic Alliance acknowledges the measures announced by the President and key departments to address the recent tragic deaths of 22 children in South Africa due to food-borne illnesses. These announcements emphasise the importance of improving food safety standards, particularly in spaza shops, which have been implicated in these devastating incidents.
Some major concerns must be noted about the potential impact this will have on the municipalities within South Africa. The introduction of stricter regulations and inspections for spaza shops, including licensing requirements and health compliance checks is welcome.
We call on the Department of Cooperative Governance & Traditional Affairs to establish a dashboard where progress of compliance issues will be captured and updated daily. This will give the Portfolio Committee opportunity to exercise its oversight mandate to ensure that those who do not comply can have interventions.
However, the call to have all spaza shops within South Africa registered with the local municipality after complying with all health and other compliance requirements within 21 days is quite unrealistic. South Africa is reported to have over 150,000 spaza shops, and the geographical spread of these, coupled with the lack of capacity in local municipalities, will make this task very difficult. The logistical and administrative demands to inspect and issue certificates to all of these are quite substantial.
This will have unintended consequences and place additional burdens on local governments which include the administrative added pressure to add more resources to monitor compliance and to be able to enforce regulations.
Local municipalities will need technical, financial, and logistical backing to meet these obligations effectively.
The fact remains that local municipalities should have been dealing with issues of compliance a long time ago, we need not wait for crisis to get the marching orders.
The health and safety of our children should never be compromised, and it is incumbent upon government to ensure that plans meant to protect them are not just lip service.
Regards
Marina van Zyl MP
DA Spokesperson on Cooperative Governance & Traditional Affairs