Health Minister Wael Abu Faour and Beirut Governor Ziad Chebib traded jabs over the weekend over the closure of the Beirut fish market, with each accusing the other of corruption.
Chebib said that the Director General of the Commercial Markets Administration Yasser Debian, who happens to manage the fish market, also works as an adviser to the health minister.
The CMA head, according to Chebib, has taken advantage of his position as an adviser to the health minister … in order to prevent the food safety campaign from affecting the fish market.
In response, Abu Faour’s media office issued a statement, accusing the governor of taking advantage of his position as a governor to preserve the reality of corruption in Beirut’s slaughterhouse and other divisions of Beirut’s governorate.
The Beirut fish market was closed Saturday for one week for rehabilitation, after business and union officials announced the decision to accept a temporary closure.
Chebib, who accompanied security forces during a surprise raid on the market last week, ordered its closure Thursday. Chebib said then that the Beirut Municipality’s health department had carried out an assessment of the facility and found the market to be infested with rats and insects.
The governor’s decision prompted a backlash from the head of the CMA, who accused Chebib of inaction concerning a bone-grinding mill used by Beirut’s slaughterhouse.
The health minister has requested shutting down the bone-grinding mill many times? Why is it still operating? Debian asked, accusing the governor of targeting the fish market because of his inability to order the closure of the mill.
In a statement, the governor said he had already told the contractor who owns the mill to shut down operations. However, he did not specify why his decision was not enforced.
Over the weekend, Health Ministry inspectors shut down a sweets shop and a food warehouse in Beirut and east Lebanon, the ministry announced in a statement.
An unidentified sweets shop in Taalbaya, in the Bekaa Valley, was shut down after discovering some rotten products and others with fake expiration dates.
Another team of inspectors also shut down a food warehouse belonging to Adonis Spices in the Beirut suburb of Bir Hasan, the statement added.
Spices, ice cubes and fish were found stored in manners that violated food safety standards, the statement explained.
The ministry also announced that a dairy product factory in the Bekaa Valley belonging to Mustapha al-Shammouri has been giving the green light to resume operations after an inspection Saturday determined that all violations had been corrected.
The moves were the latest in a nationwide crackdown on food safety violations that the Abu Faour launched in November.
The health minister Sunday also expressed hopes that his ministry’s sweeping food safety campaign would develop into a full reformist approach that could be applied to several issues in the country.
Our ambition as the Progressive Socialist Party is to break this ongoing cycle of corruption, he said. The food safety campaign, which began as the policy of one ministry, has become a governmental policy after it was adopted by several other ministries, he added.
2015 The Daily Star