South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered Friday a large-scale inspection of tuck shops and informal corner stores after the deaths from food poisoning of more than 20 children, some linked to an agricultural raticide.
In a televised evening address to the nation, Ramaphosa said shops implicated in deaths of the children would be closed immediately and local authorities had to clean up piles of garbage that were leading to rat infestations.
There had been 890 reported incidents of food-born illnesses since the start of September 2024, with at least 22 children killed in the past few weeks, he said.
In a case that has caused a major outcry, six young children died in Johannesburg’s Soweto last month after eating chips from an informal shop known as a spaza.
Many spaza shops in South Africa are run by foreign nationals, including from Ethiopia and Pakistan, and the deaths prompted…
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