By Lodu William Odiya
The South Sudan National Bureau of Standard (SSNBS) called on stakeholders to implement the food safety standards in the country.
Speaking to the media during a press conference yesterday, Gloria Nyoka Jospeh, the SSNBS Executive Director said the Bureau is working hard to verify and inspect food commodity at the Nimule border in order to implement standard in the country.
โSurely if all the people implement the standard, especially the industries and all the traders, we will not be having the food that we need to dispose. This is because also we are talking about reserving food, you know we are addressing poverty and we don’t want to be disposing this foodโ she explained.
Nyoka underscored some consignments rejected at the Nimule border because they were not complying with the standard.
โThis is why we are asking people to implement the standard so that we have a safe food that is consumed without disposalโ she said.
However, Nyoka emphasized that the Bureau has discovered that some of the traders ask the suppliers to brand in their packages โMade for South Sudanโ stating enforcement would be made to abolish the act.
โAfter long research for us in South Sudan, we have discovered as the National Bureau of Standards that some of our traders, they go out and they ask the suppliers to put in their package made for South Sudanโ she underscored.
She underlined that any good Made for export, that means it has some subsidies within the country that gives them a low cost in order to helps people export the products.
โThese are some of the things we are going to address and we are going to come out with an implementation to tell our traders that that is not the right way to goโ she added.
The Nyoka reaffirmed SSNBSโs commitment to ensuring that all imported and locally available products meet national safety standards.
To safeguard public health, the expired products is safely disposed of at any designated dumping site far from residential areas.