By Sodiq Ojuroungbe
The Ogun State government has announced plans to conduct a compliance exercise on all table and sachet water factories across the state.
Reportr Door Healthwise gathered that the government is embarking on the exercise following the recent reported cholera outbreak in some local government areas in the state.
The state government had on September 17, 2023, alerted residents to the outbreak of Cholera in the Ijebu North Local Government Area, disclosing that three deaths had been recorded.
The disease later spread to Abeokuta North and Abeokuta South LGs in the state capital.
The Commissioner for Health, Dr. Tomi Coker, while giving an update in Abeokuta, confirmed 12 fatalities out of about 236 cases recorded so far.
The outbreak was blamed on open defecation, poor waste management, and inadequate access to clean water.
The State Commissioner for Environment, Mr. Ola Oresanya in a statement made available to newsmen on Monday, said the compliance exercise became necessary to address the environmental and hygienic negligence detected in their production processes.
Oresanya during a stakeholders meeting comprising members of the Table Water And Beverages Producers Association of Nigeria, Ogun State chapter, and officials of the Ministries of Environment, Health, as well as Industries, Trade, and Investment in Abeokuta, blamed some of the factories as the major cause of cholera outbreak which claimed some lives while other were hospitalized.
According to him, the government will now conduct the compliance exercise to reinforce and domesticate their National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control certification in all the 20 local government areas of the state as the team will move to all water-producing factories for on-the-spot assessment of their production processes.
He added, “The team will among others demand routine microbial analysis results of their products, check the distance of their production boreholes to their and septic tanks, their operational environment as well as a medical certificate of fitness of their products for human consumption.
“For clarity, all registered and unregistered water-producing factories will be visited and any one of them that fails the compliance exercise will be shut and will remain so until it passes the laid down procedures before it is opened for business in the public interest.”
The commissioner called on table and sachet water producers to support the compliance exercise, adding that the state government is not out to witch-hunt any of them, but to safeguard the health of its citizens from preventable waterborne diseases, and set a healthy standard for their products which have suffered from negative public acceptance in the aftermath of the outbreak of the disease.
Responding, the Chairman of the Table Water And Beverages Producers Association of Nigeria, Ogun State Chapter, Mr. Femi Olukoga pledged his members’ support for the exercise.
He further said the exercise will help the body to sanitize its ranks and weed out quacks whose activities are damaging to the well-being of residents of the state.
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