The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has closed 10 substandard and unregistered bakeries, and eight table water factories in Bonny Island, Bonny Local Council of Rivers State.
South-South zonal director of NAFDAC, Chukwuma Oligbo, who disclosed this yesterday, said a detachment of police officers from Finima and Bonny Divisional Headquarters provided assistance and security to officials of the agency during the three-day operation.
According to him, the action became necessary following the agency’s investigations and surveillance as well as consumers’ complaints.
He said: “It was discovered that some of the bakeries were producing in ramshackle facilities made with wood and rusty corrugated iron sheets, with inappropriate baking equipment, while the workers were not properly kitted. The bread was stored in a very unhygienic manner with flies perching on them. Some of the bakeries also bear the names of popular loaves in Port Harcourt.
“Most of the bakeries were not registered by NAFDAC, and are unregistrable because they cannot meet the minimum requirement. A few that were registered had expired licences or had relocated from their initial place of registration in Port Harcourt to Bonny Island without notifying the agency for formal documentation and mandatory inspections.”
Oligbu said some of the table water factories, which were mostly involved in the production of sachet water, were not using filtration equipment, while a facility that was into production of water in bottles and jars was manually filling them with a locally improvised machine, instead of using an automated process, which is the acceptable standard recommended by NAFDAC.
