The government has extended the deadline to register spaza shops to February 2025.
Only 42,915 applications were received since the November order by president Cyril Ramaphosa that all be spaza shops in the country be reregistered by December 17.
Ramaphosa ordered the immediate closure of spaza shops after a spate of deaths linked to food poisoning. An unusually high number of children and adults died after ingesting food from spaza shops across the country.
The government has since classified the health crisis as a national disaster.
Speaking at a press briefing on Wednesday, co-operative governance and traditional affairs minister Velenkosini Hlabisa said that though 19,386 shop operators had been registered in line with classification of the national disaster, the government still needed to do more to ensure that the sector was properly regulated and adhered to health regulations.
“In consultation with the president, the government has resolved to extend the registration deadline for all spaza shops and other food-handling outlets to 28 February 2025,” said Hlabisa.
“Those who have registered their businesses and have duly received their acknowledgment of registration still need to undertake a further process to obtain their trading licences,” he said.
He said environmental health practitioners and “other regulatory authorities” would still inspect the registered food-related trading businesses to ensure that their businesses were eligible to trade.
The government allocated R15m for rapid testing of suspected contaminated food products and setting up a R500m fund to support spaza shops and other businesses in the townships and rural areas.
In Gauteng, 733 shop operators have been registered out of a 2,605 applications while in KwaZulu-Natal out of 7,187 applications only 749 applications were registered. The highest number of registrations were in Mpumalanga with 7,263 registrations processed out of 9,283 applications. This is followed by Limpopo where of 5,504 applications 4223 shop operators were registered.
“After registration there must be a verification process such as to check where it is operating. It will be visited to check if it complies with all requirements and health standards,” said Hlabisa.
“Once verification is done and application [is] approved and they find that you don’t comply and some of the information was incorrect, you will be forced to shut down. If it is health matters, it will be shut down immediately.”
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