Bags Of Rice Burnt - After Seizure By FDB

Some of the unwholesome rice on its way to the Kpone landfill site to be destroyed.

Eleven thousand and eighty bags of unwholesome rice, which were about to be cleared at the Tema Port for public consumption, have been intercepted and destroyed by the Export and Imports Control Unit of the Food and Drugs Board (FDB).

Another consignment of two 20-foot containers of fake Malboro cigarettes have also been destroyed at the Kpone landfill site to prevent them from being sold to the public.

The rice, found caked and mouldy, with offensive odour, was loaded in 14 articulated trucks and escorted from the Tema Port to the Kpone landfill site where they were destroyed by personnel of the FDB, Customs Division of Ghana Revenue Authority, National Security and the Police Buffalo Unit.

Speaking to the Daily Graphic at the landfill site Thursday, the Head of Imports and Exports Division of the FDB, Mr Emmanuel Yaw Kwarteng, said an import company, Eakaza Limited, imported the new brand of rice labelled ‘Imperial Chef Rice 25% broken Pakistani rice ’ from Pakistan into the country with the intention of introducing it to the market.

During a routine inspection, personnel of the FDB came across the about 40,000 bags of rice brought from Pakistan by the ship, M.V. Andres.

The rice was packed in yellow poly-sacks of 50-kilogramme net weight each with an expiry date of November, 2013 .

The FDB officials said initial inspection of the cargo revealed that five bags of the consignment had dark patches on them while others were caked and wet.

Such unusual development prompted the officials to do further checks, and after sorting the entire consignment of about 40,000 bags of rice, 11,080 bags were found unwholesome because they emitted bad odour while 28,620 were declared wholesome.

Mr Kwarteng cautioned the consuming public to be wary of the food they ate because unwholesome food items could have serious health consequences for them.

Mr Kwarteng also blamed the clearing agents who handled the cargo and asked them to report cases of such unwholesome food items.

People who had information about the destruction of the rice rushed to the site but they were controlled by the Police Buffalo Unit.

In the case of the cigarettes, one importer is being held by the police for counterfeiting while the second importer is on the run.

A Customs Chief Collector at the State Ware House, Mr Ben Richter, said the consignment of the Marlboro cigarettes arrived in the country in May, 2010.

Mr Richter said when the containers were examined, they were found to contain 145 large cartons of Marlboro cigarettes.

He said because one of the containers was not full, the smugglers filled the rest of the space with concrete slabs to make up for the weight of one container full of cigarettes.

After the goods had been confiscated, laboratory analysis was conducted in the United Kingdom, which established that the consignment was counterfeit.

A representative of the international trade mark owners of the Marlboro cigarette, who is the Manager for Brand Integrity for the Philip Morris International, Mr Nicolas Otte, flew in with a team to observe the destruction of the cigarettes to ensure that the counterfeit product did not enter the market.