BULAWAYO City Council is losing potential revenues in unpaid fees from shops operating illegally in the city.
The local authority’s Health Inspectorate recently raided various shops in the city centre and suburbs issuing intimation orders and tickets for various offences that include operating without valid licences or registration certificates and selling contaminated food.
This is revealed in the latest council minutes in which the health services director Edwin Mzingwane Sibanda reported last month that the inspectorate section conducted 1 570 inspections for various purposes from routine monitoring for compliance.
“Non-compliant premises were issued with intimations and deposit fines,” the council report read.
The report stated that 17 premises were issued with intimations most of them in Makokoba, Mpopoma, and Entumbane suburbs,
They were found trading without valid trading licences and selling contaminated or expired food.
The inspectorate also issued tickets to several shops that violated the council's health by laws.
"A total of nine tickets were issued for various offences," read the report.
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The report showed that those who were issued with tickets were operating illegal kitchens, poor housekeeping, failing to maintain fixtures and fittings in food premises in an unclean condition or repair, trading without a valid licence, using premises without ablution facility and water, keeping of goats and sheep without council approval.
Most of these shops were identified in the central business district along Lobengula Street, some along Jason Moyo Street, George Silundika Street, and 3rd Avenue among other places.
The council also condemned various foodstuffs worth thousands of dollars after being classified as unwholesome and unsuitable for human consumption.
Most of the shops in question were identified in Mpopoma, some of them in Njube and Entuimbane.
"The area environmental health practitioners worked with the premises to either maintain the good hygiene or improve their hygiene practices," read the minutes.
Despite the city council battling with shops that sell unsuitable for consumption foodstuff, it also has a torrid work to curb the proliferation of illegal vending.
