Cape Town — Spaza shop owners in Buffalo City in the Eastern Cape were left on high alert after police started to clamp down on the sales of illegal goods after fake foods allegedly led to the death of school pupils.
Many spaza shops have been under scrutiny lately following the death of a pupil last week in Roodepoort, while another 47 pupils were reported to have fallen ill after eating goods from another local spaza shop in Sebokeng.
Accoring to eNCA, authorities had to step in after reports came in that residents were forcefully removing expired and illegal goods from East London shops. Law enforcement agencies had their hands full with some shop owners resisting arrest.
Foreign spaza shop owners said they have had great difficulty in getting the right documents because there are always issued with the computer system at Home Affairs, preventing them from registering their documents.
WATCH: Law enforcement officials in Eastern Cape clamping down on undocumented foreign national spaza shops owners. The officials stepped in after the community members had started to forcefully remove expired goods from the spaza shops.
Several illegal immigrants were… pic.twitter.com/CqS9DVZRYx
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Buffalo City Mayor Princess Faku has lauded the efforts of the provincial security cluster, the various departments of the municipality and Home Affairs. She said spaza shop owners caught without a permit, would be forced to close down.
“The past two weeks we have had an international migration workshop offered by home affair and we were told of our roles as a municipality of what we need to do. We want to warn them, to tell them, if you don’t have a permit to operate a spaza shop, we are going to close it down,” Faku said.
The clamping down of businesses selling expired or illegal goods is seen by authorities in the Metro as a huge turning point in ensuring that those who are in business have the responsibility to not cause any harm to communities that support them.
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Compiled by Matthew Petersen
