Chinese checkers - Business owners breaching food-storage guidelines swap places to beat safety watchdog
Published:Friday | November 1, 2019 | 12:05 AMNickoy Wilson/Gleaner Writer
Small Chinese businesses have come under the microscope of the Food Storage and Prevention of Infestation Division of the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries.
Chief Food Storage Inspector Maxine Hoffman says these businesses are constantly in breach of food-safety regulations.
“The entities that we find those problems are mainly the Chinese entities. So like the Chinese restaurants and wholesales, they are the ones mainly,” Hoffman said.
In an interview with The Gleaner yesterday, the chief food storage inspector said that constant changes in the management of the Chinese businesses is one of the major problems the division faces in enforcing the regulations.
“The downtown, the Orange Street, those places [are] problem places. All of the major towns where you have the Chinese communities … they are the bigger problems in terms of not complying. But what we find also, a Chinese if it is that it’s here for years, they’ve been here for 20 years or so, we have less problem with them,” Hoffman said.
She said, “Sometimes we give them a notice, they fail, and we go back. They tell us that management has changed and there is a different name and we have to do a reinspection, and they keep doing that. So they never get compliant.”
Hoffman said the practice was not observed in larger, more established businesses.
Operations officer of the Association of Chinese Enterprises in Jamaica, Yasen Chen, told The Gleaner yesterday that the organisation was aware of the problem but could not confirm that measures were being taken to curb the practice.
Hoffman, however, admitted that staffing of the division also hampers enforcement efforts.
“To be honest, one of our challenges is that we don’t have enough staff to keep on going. We have the autonomy to get the police and shut them down, but sometimes we keep extending the notice. We are doing something now to get increased staff … but for now, we can’t really have the big hammer over them,” she said.