Comply or be shut down, warns MMC Tshwaku on Spaza shops

Spaza shop patrollers will be deployed from the end of this month to conduct food quality inspections, monitor and shut down spaza shops flouting compliance.

This is in response to the spate of reported deaths that have been alleged to be caused by food poisoning in the province.

“The problem has been the human resources issue and inspectors which are limited but what we are going to do as the city, we are going to be launching 600 patrollers, who will be trained by environmental health to spot interns of non-compliance.

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“So these patrollers will be working with JMPD across these 1000 estimated spaza shops in Soweto. We are going to use them as a force multiplier.

“We have the capacity, so at the end of the month, we will close them down if they are not complying,” commented MMC for Public Safety, Dr. Mgcini Tshwaku on the side-lines of an operation in Soweto.

Piles of expired goods, items with no expiry dates and counterfeits were confiscated from spaza shops owned by foreign nationals during the operation in Dobsonville Hostel (Sphiwe Village) at the weekend. The operation was led by the JMPD with City of Johannesburg officials from Environmental Health and Emergency Management Services (EMS).

Mounting calls in parts of Gauteng have demanded some of these spaza shops to be permanently closed. During the operation in Soweto, two shops were shut down for non-compliance.

Officials from EMS found illegal connections of electricity, overloading of plugs, and lack of extinguishers in some of the stores.

According to Tshwaku, there was an estimated 1000 foreign owned spaza shops in Soweto alone.

Earlier this month, after news of alleged food poisoning deaths emerged from Naledi, MMC Tshwaku met with the leadership of Pakistan shops in Mayfair.

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He said the meeting was to warn them about fixing these issues however nothing has come out of those discussions.

“I told the leaders that we need quality management systems, no one must sleep there, there must be an inspection authority among themselves to check regularly on these issues but a week since we met up with them, they said they will form a committee but nothing has happened.”

He issued a stern warning, stating that the city would enforce compliance as inspections would escalate across the city.

“They will see red. It will be business unusual. The red patrollers are ready. There will be a widespread closing of these shops.

“They must implement what we have told them or we will have no option but to close all the shops in Johannesburg.

“We have the capacity if their bosses don’t want to come to the party. We will force them and close those shops.”