Ghanaian consumers may have to be extra careful when buying even from their trusted shopping centres. The La Sanitation and Motor Court has fined the Koala Shopping Centre at Osu GH¢9,600 for displaying and selling expired products. The shopping centre was also charged with accumulating harmful objects on their premises and discharging human excreta into a public drain.
According to a report by Daily Graphic, the Chief Environmental Officer of the La Dadekotopon Municipal Assembly (LaDMA), Mr Paul Agbagba, who was the prosecutor, said “on October 13, this year, a team of environmental and public health officers from the assembly, on a routine environmental health inspection, visited the shopping centre and in the course of their duties found expired products that had been put up for sale”.
The report stated that further checks revealed that more of the expired products were being kept in storerooms and a cold room.
“Mr Agbagba said the situation prompted the team to carry out additional inspection on the premises, only to discover that there were detrimental particles and refuse piled up in a corner on the compound” the newspaper reports.
Not just that, the inspection team also found that the shopping centre had connected its sceptic tank to a public drain and was discharging faeces into it, the court, presided over by Justice Mrs Emelia Abrokwah, found the shopping centre guilty of the offences and fined them GH¢9,600.
Mr Agbagba made it clear to the paper that the “action of the Koala Shopping Centre was of serious concern considering the fact that the La Dadekotopon Municipality had recorded one of the highest cases of cholera in the metropolis in recent times”.