Workers at Devland and Cash Carry referred to the MMC for Public Safety's visit yesterday as a joke because many of the expired goods on their shelves were removed from the store in the morning.

MMC Mgcini Tshwaku was accompanied by former MMC of Public Safety and Chief of JMPD David Tembe, the EMS and and the City of Johannesburg representative to raid the cash and carry.

YOU?RE KIDDING

Speaking to Zimoja anonymously, the workers said they had a busy morning removing expired good from shelves after learning that the MMC was coming to the store.

"Why did the MMC tweet that he was coming here," asked the employees, adding that, "It's obvious that someone alerted the store manager and owner and that's why they rushed to remove all the expired goods from the shelves." They added that it was a quick check and they didn't thoroughly go through every single thing. "Let me tell you about the issue of illegal foreign nationals working here, it's a lot. They were all sent home this morning because authorities were coming. This place doesn't comply at all," an employee whispered to Zimoja's ear.

The MMC inspects expiry dates on food

WE ARE COMING FOR YOU 

Tshwaku told the media that they will be rolling out more of these operations come 1 November. He added that all places that don't comply will be shutdown.

"We will not stop here, this is the beginning of many operations. We found that the Devland Cash and Carry's fire certificate was not compliant and they put food on the floor for which they were fined R1500 for that. One major and disturbing thing is that they have cats on the premises and they know that they can't have cats around food so we fined them R2500 for that."

Tshwaku added that they also discovered that some of Devland Cash and Carry's "Goldi" chicken portions don't have dates and they ordered them to remove that stock.

In his defence the store manager Zaheer Paruk said it's the supplier's fault and not his.

"It's the supplier that didn't put on the date. There?s no way I can go through every single packet of chicken portions checking for dates," he said.

Former MMC Tembe said he was displeased with the expired food being kept in a storage at the back of the store.

"Why are they keeping all this expired food, they should be getting rid of it and have it destroyed because next they'll repackage and sell to our kids"

These operations come after the scourge of food poisoning incidents amongst school children in recent weeks, with some children even passing away from consuming poisonous snacks.