The 21 day countdown for spaza shop owners in Nelson Mandela Bay Ward 60 to register their spaza shops so that they can be inspected for compliance by the Municipality and relevant government officials has commenced.
Following the recent announcement by President Cyril Ramaphosa, where he issued a directive that all spaza shops must be registered for a process of compliance verification within 21 days, Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) for Human Settlements who is also a Ward 60 Councillor, Thembinkosi Mafana on Monday, 18 November 2024 engaged all spaza shop owners in an information sharing session and registration drive.
Fifty-four foreign national owned spaza shop owners attended the session. In Ward 60 there are 94 spaza shop owners.
A similar engagement session was held yesterday with Spaza shop owners from Kariega, Despatch, Kwa Langa, KwaNobuhle at Babs Madlakane. A follow up meeting will be held on Thursday, 21 November at the same venue with an aim of ensuring all Spaza shop owners are fully aware of all relevant information and compliance regulations and legislation.
“In as much as we were already busy with a health and safety enforcement programme across the Metro that focuses on spaza shops across the Metro, we have to swiftly respond to the President’s call. This situation is serious, acting with urgency can reduce further chances of sickness or deaths that are associated with food poisoning resulting from unhygienic handling of perishable food” said councillor Mafana.
MMC Mafana was accompanied by Municipal officials from the Economic Development, Tourism and Agriculture, responsible for small, medium enterprises (SMME) and South African Police Service officers from Swartkops Police Station.
The spaza owners were taken through the application process and compliance issues. After the session, they were given compliance forms to fill and submit at the councillor’s office. They were given until end of business on Tuesday to submit the forms. Once the forms have been submitted, multi-disciplinary inspections will be done to check if all the compliance issues indicated in the form are accurate.
“If a spaza shop is found to be non-compliant to regulations and bylaws, the shop will be closed down. We cannot allow places selling food to our people, more especially children, not adhering to health, regulations and noncompliance to bylaws, to operate illegally” said MMC Mafana.
Related: Why ONLY Ward 60? Why ONLY Spaza Shops? What About …?
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