By Taban Henry
Juba City Council authorities on Friday reported that they have confiscated a number of expired food stuffs and drugs impounded from across the markets in the City.
This came after the City Council launched a search for expired goods and drugs across Juba City, which was prompted after reports emerged that traders are selling expired goods in the market.
Among the goods confiscated included maize flour, beans and some drugs assortment from over 76 clinics across Juba city’s jurisdiction.
The crackdown on the expired goods and drugs also extended to seizure of the formerly banned spirits, alcohol comprising; Star Gin, Boss Gin, Royal Gin, Disko gin among many other strong liquor in packaging with red caps.
Speaking to the media on Friday Taban Charles, the Deputy Executive officer of Juba City Councilapplauded the operation teams that exerted efforts to confiscate those harmful food products and medicines.
According to Charles the first search happened last month in an inspection exercise by Juba City Council after having been tipped off, of expired goods and drugs in the pharmacies and in the main markets particularly in Konyo-Konyo.
“Our team went for inspection and indeed like you see in the background, we have a big quantity of expired maize floor and this flour was for an institution in this country but because it is expired somebody thought of making money at the expense of our citizens by starting repackaging, you can see there is a machine which repacks expired maize flour,” Charles disclosed.
He termed the act as unfortunate adding that they think their enemies are outside yet nationals are the ones killing themselves.
“The food that has been confiscated according to the statements from the culprits they claimed that much of it goes to the States outside Juba and our citizens in the states are blind people who do not know how to read and justify whether this food is good for human consumption or not,” Charles cited.
He said the person decides to sell expired goods but when arrested, they received a lot of resistance from the very recognized institution protecting criminals to the highest decree which is very unfortunate in this country citing that they have been blamed for making the inspections and yet this is one of our primary functions as local government.
“Some people don’t understand their lines of operations and they interfere into our job, how do we wait for a certain Ministry for example to come and intervene when our people are dying and yet we have operational officers on the ground. We have public health officers and all the departments in Juba City Council that is supposed to reflect our common goal in this state and the country as a whole,” he added.
The Juba City Council acting Executive Officer stated that they have got real numbers of problems with the other levels of the governments, saying earlier on they had a problem with spirits, and they are losing people every day not people who are elderly but young stars who are dying every day.
He underlined that they as city council are burying not less than 5 people per day, that’s nature of problem the City Council is facing, citing that “now when we go for inspection and confiscate such dangerous commodities we are blamed”.
“I want to call on everybody, the team in Juba City Council to step up the inspection exercise irrespective of all the resistances particularly the CID department and the other organized forces to cooperate with our administrative and public health officers to ensure that these practices are brought to an end,” Charles appealed.
“We have enemies everywhere in the market we have enemies working against the interest of the people of this country. In the streets we have people working against the interest of people of this country and this can be reflected by the way we behave, waste is being spread all over, this is intentional and if we are to fight them we need your collective efforts,” he urged.
He called on all levels of government in the State to cooperate with Juba City Council in fighting the vice.
“If we don’t and we want to make business on expired goods this will be unfortunate because most of our young people will go and we shall not have people to carry the banner of this country in the nearest future”.
Meanwhile Gen. George Albano Ladu, the Director of Police at Juba City Council revealed that the expired flour belongs to one of the soldiers who happened to buy new sacks and brought a machine to repackage the flour into new sacks.
Gen. Albino however said they went and confiscated the expired maize flour and brought them to the City Council adding that they had launched an investigation and there after opened a case.
He disclosed that there are over 238 people who died in March this year and about 474 people died last year because of alcohol and at the time of his remarks there was a dead body in Rock City saying alcohol has become a problem.
“I am calling on all the citizens seeing anything that can damage human health to report immediately to the concerned authorities. We are working and we don’t get any help from our citizens. I am urging all of you to see anything that damages our health please call us,” he called on the public.
“We have arrested three people of which one of them is a soldier, so we have opened a case against them. For those dealing with drugs, we have also arrested three people from the clinic,” he noted.
Thiik Thiik Mayardit the Deputy Mayor for Infrastructure and Development stated that they have confiscated drugs housed in new cartons yet expired drugs are put inside.
Thiik said that is what the drugstore keepers have been doing to blindfold the people so that they cannot detect that what is inside is expired.
“The people who are doing this are not far from the responsible people like the wheat flour was actually for the Maj. Gen who has been doing it for a very long time and doing this means we are killing our people and why should we kill our people while we have fought for them and liberated this country,” Thiik questioned.
“If we are the ones doing this as citizens of South Sudan, what will the foreigners do to us? They will see to it that we the people in South Sudan are not careful about our lives and they can do whatever they want so as they remain on this land. I want to tell the people who are doing this to refrain from this act of doing such activities because the City Council is mandated to go for public order. I want to tell the people that we are not going to sleep” Thiik echoed.
According to the Deputy Mayor the confiscated goods and drugs will be burnt adding that the Mayor will also issue an order burning the consumption of spirits such as Boss gin, Royal Gin, star Gin and Disko across the Juba City Council.