South Sudan disposes of substantial number of expired goods
September 19, 2010 (MALAKAL) — The Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) on Sunday said it has disposed of a significant number of expired goods, including beer. This came following the combustion of 500 crates and a significant number of cartons full of alcoholic and non-alcoholic expired goods belonging to an Eritrean wholesale supplier.
The supplier, Muse AF Company, is one of the biggest foreign agencies operating in the regional capital of Juba, which also imports beverages from Germany and Dubai via Port Mombassa, Kenya.
On Friday 500 crates and cartons were incinerated at Lagun dumping site on the Juba-Yei road.
While witnessing the disposal exercise, the Director General of Standards and Meteorology in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, GoSS, Mary Gordon Muortat, stated that her department is having a great deal of difficulty in dealing with expired consumer goods in the market, as traders do not show up voluntarily to dispose them.
Muortat said the discovery of expired food items is very common in Juba. Whenever they find expired good they compel the owners to dispose of the; the majority of people still do not believe that canned food and soft drinks expire.
She lauded the initiative taken by the Eritrean traders who voluntarily reported their expired stock and appealed to the rest of trader community in possesion of what she described as “potentially-harmful commodities”, to report them to the Ministry of Commerce so that they can be disposed of.
Muortat explained that food items and drugs can get damaged while in stores, as most of these commodities are manufactured in different climatic zones and temperatures. When these products are stored in climates like southern Sudan’s, coupled with the poor storage facilities in Juba, they expire before their stated “use-by” dates.
She also pointed out that her department still lacks the laboratories requried to conduct independent investigations into food safety and pharmacuticals. However, the department is able to work in collaboration with the Uganda Bureau of Standards to check the quality of consumer goods imported to southern Sudan. The department in charge of overseeing the condition of drugs and restaurants in Juba in the Ministry of Health is still not well established.
Explaining that Sudan Standard and Meteorology Organization could perform examinations of most of the commodities brought in from Eastern African countries as it is restricted by Islamic Sharia Law, which prohibits them from testing alcoholic goods, Muortat said that she was hopeful that southern Sudan will have its own department capable of executing the tests. A suitable site for the laboratory has already been identified.
Head of Muse AF Company, Isaiah Tsagay pointed out that he has lost over 70,000 SDG. However, he was not reticent as his concern was far more for, “the wellbeing of a single Southern Sudanese and it is this which compelled me to come voluntarily to the department in charge, to help me dispose [of the items] in a manner [which is] compatible with the law of the land.” According Tsagay, 422 crates of Cheers Efes beverages, a non-alcoholic malt drink and over one hundred crates of Efes Pilsner beer all expired since January and March this year and could not be sold to people because they would be harmful to their health.
This is not the first food scare in southern Sudan; last year, the director of Sudan Standards of Meteorology Organization, Majak Deng Kuol in a televised statement on Southern Sudan TV, said that people have been using a dangerous chemical in cake baking which causes stomach cancer learning difficulties in infants.
Since the signing of Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in which northern and southern Sudan agreed to lay down arms after 22 years of war, the region has welcomed investors from all corners of the world, yet the quality of services they offer is not assured. Recently there was a rise in the number of quacks masquerading as doctors specialising in different medical fields, including Nigerian ‘healers’. Many southern Sudanese were left maimed in botched operations. There is also a nefarious hemorhoid cream, known locally as Bua-Asir on the market.
As Juba keeps on expanding, the dumping site along the Juba-Yei road is becoming a problem. It is affecting the health of the surrounding population, some of whom eat the harmful food items. ‘Lagun’ is a Bari word meaning ‘to scavenge’, and that is exactly what some of the residents are doing.
The Bari are a sedantry agro-pastoralist ethnic group from the savannahs of the Nile valley.
(ST)