The Ministry of Health and Sanitation, especially the Directorate of Environmental Health and all its stakeholders including the Standards Bureau deployed at the Queen Elizabeth Quay, Cline Town, have compromised the health of Sierra Leoneans by failing to take appropriate measures against SADD Group Ltd which is still bagging rotten rice and the good ones at one of its stores in Freetown.
Even though the Directorate of Environmental Health and Sanitation has on August, 2019 made damning findings on the non-compliance of SAAD Group in meeting health and other hygiene requirements as they relate to the condition of its stores, lack of a rodent and pest control measures and other hygiene conditions for staff working in the bagging of rice for human consumption.
SAAD group has failed to honour the recommendations of the report of the inspectors attached to the Directorate which included closing its stores for fumigation and also putting in place other health standards.
The Directorate of Environmental and Health especially the Food Safety Division should be overhauled by the MOHS as they are compromising the very reports which they produced through inspections done on the facilities of SAAD Group.
The lack of compliance on the part of SAAD Group is dangerous for the fact that the company (SAAD Group) remains the only supplier of rice to several companies operating within the country, especially our forces: Police and Military.
An insider source at SAAD Group has told this medium that the company is still bagging contaminated rice with the good one at a heavily guarded place within their business premises in connivance with Police at Ross Road Division against advice from the authorities to dump the rice or supply it to a poultry farm company.
A New Direction Government should be seen to be doing things differently rather than going the old way.