Nyakallo Tefu
The Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma announced on Monday that the sale of hot cooked food at retail stores was now prohibited for the duration of the lockdown.
The new regulation states that any food product, including non-alcoholic beverages, may be sold during the ‘National State of Disaster’ because of COVID-19, excluding cooked hot food.
This comes after retailers such as Woolworths, Checkers, Spar and Shoprite continued to sell hot cooked food while restaurants and other retail stores closed because they were not part of essential services.
Last week, Minister of Trade and Industry Ebrahim Patel told a media briefing that from the beginning of lockdown, retailers were supposed to stop selling cooked food.
“Government’s position on selling hot prepared food was always very clear, the hot food section was supposed to be closed from day one of lockdown”, said Patel.
However, this has not been received well, with the Democratic Alliance announcing that it will be writing to Patel, seeking reasons as to why the government has decided to ban cooked and prepared food.
“We expect the Trade and Industry Minister to respond to the party by Tuesday (21 April 2020) and then we will decide what our next step is,” said the DA MP Dean Macpherson.
