Blaine: Fix free-for-all at school gates
FOUNDER OF the youth advocacy group Hear the Children’s Cry, Betty Ann Blaine, is calling for greater monitoring of what is being sold at the island’s school gates. Weeks after concerns were expressed that efforts by the ministries of health and education to reduce the amount of sugar consumed by children in schools could be stymied by vendors, a liquid candy with an image looking like a rainbowcoloured male genitalia, being sold to children as young as six years old, has earned the wrath of Blaine. “I don’t want to take food out of people’s mouths, as I know that a lot of these women are selling at school gates to look after their families and their children, but this is not the first time we are having this conversation about what is being sold at school gates.
“People cannot be allowed to sell any and every thing at school gates. And so I am calling on the Government to properly regulate what is being sold at school gates,” said Blaine.
She noted that most parents are unaware of what their children are buying from the vendors in proximity to their schools, and argued that the State needs to be more vigilant.
At one primary school in downtown Kingston, vendors told The Sunday Gleaner that while they sold the CiCi liquid fruit candy which has a rainbow-coloured image of a male genitalia, it was unavailable at the time as members of a police team had seized them.
She said the police justified the seizure by claiming that the packages had a foreign language and they were not sure what was inside. Efforts to get a comment from the police were unsuccessful late last week.
But checks by our news team showed that the candies have the ingredients listed in English. They also have the FSSAI designation which signifies that they have been approved by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India.
The Bureau of Standards Jamaica also confirmed that the packaging and labelling meet local standards.
“As it relates to the labelling of prepackaged goods, what you would need, for example, is the product name, the net quantity, the name and identifiable address of the manufacturer and packager, the country of origin, ingredients listing and picture of representation.
“And it doesn’t specify the pictorial representation, but it would have to be relating to the product,” said Demar Cornwall, librarian at the Technical Information Centre of the BSJ.
He said while the BSJ has not received any complaints about the CiCi liquid fruit candy, persons with concern can call its inspection arm, the National Compliance and Regulatory Authority.