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BEIRUT: Health Ministry inspectors shut down a sweets shop and a food warehouse in Beirut and east Lebanon Saturday, the ministry announced in a statement.
An unnamed sweets shop in Taalbaya, east Lebanon, 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 products factory in the Bekaa Valley belonging Mustapha al-Shammouri has been giving the green light to resume operations after an inspection Saturday revealed that all violations were corrected.
The moves were the last in a nationwide crackdown on food safety violations that Health Minister Wael Abu Faour launched in November.
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BEIRUT: The syndicate of restaurant owners said Saturday that Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk supported their demand to relax a 2012 smoking ban.
After meeting with the minister, syndicate chief Tony al-Rami said that that Machnouk “expressed his agreement and support to the proposed amendment, because it protects the Lebanon and its cuisine.”
Rami did not specify what the amendment contains. But restaurant and pub owners have long fought against the law forbidding smoking inside enclosed spaces, complaining that it's bad for business.
MPs Nadim Gemayel and Samer Saadeh submitted a proposal to amend the law in September 2012. The proposal calls for exempting from the bill all restaurants and bars whose revenues rely mostly on cigars or shisha, and instead imposing on them an annual tax.
Rami said he had presented Machnouk with some “economic comparisons” between Lebanon and other Arab and European countries like Dubai, Qatar, Germany and France.
The bill, which is known as Law 174, went into effect in 2012 and prohibited smoking inside bars, restaurants and cafes.
Health Minister Wael Abu Faour noted last month that the smoking ban is being widely violated, and announced that his ministry would carry out “raids” to ensure that it is applied.
Tourism Minister Michel Pharaon responded by saying that 70 percent of restaurants abide by the law.
Lebanon’s tourism police strictly enforced the law in the first few weeks after its adoption, especially in Beirut. But restaurants and bars have been gradually allowing smoking inside again after they realized that authorities were no longer enforcing the law.
Machnouk was criticized last month after he was seen smoking during an interview on LBCI, which was held inside the Interior Ministry.
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BEIRUT: Gunmen shot up an electricity transformer in the eastern district of Zahle early Saturday, causing severe power cuts, one week following two similar attacks carried out in the area.
The official electricity company in Zahle, Electricité de Zahlé, announced in a statement Saturday that one of its transformers was shot and stopped working, cutting the flow of electricity to a large part of the district.
EDZ said that unknown gunmen shot the equipment with five bullets using a military-grade weapon, just 24 hours after the company repaired two other transformers attacked last week.
An EDZ official told The Daily Star Saturday that the company suspects some owners of private generators of being behind the attacks.
Generator owners have been angered with EDZ after it announced a plan to reactive a plant and feed the area with 24 hours of electricity per day, meaning they would no longer need to purchase electricity from third-party suppliers.
Last Saturday, gunmen shot and damaged a transformer on the Zahle-Chtaura road, one day after shooting up another one in Dhour Zahle.
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BEIRUT: The Beirut fish market will be closed for one week starting Saturday for rehabilitation, business and union officials announced.
The head of the Commercial Markets Administration Yasser Debian announced that consumers will not be able to buy from the fish market for around one week starting Saturday at 3 p.m., while supermarkets and food shops can buy directly from the suppliers, and not through the market.
“The selling of large quantities will continue normally because there is no problem with the fish,” Debian said in a news conference Saturday with the head of the fish market vendors’ union. “I dare anyone to tell me there is any [food safety] problem in the fish.”
Debian condemned the decision of Beirut’s governor to shut down the fish market, accusing him of inaction concerning a more dangerous problem.
“It is true that the market is operating in a poisonous environment as the governor said,” Debian said. “But this environment is imposed by the nearby (slaughterhouse) bone grinder.”
Accusing the governor of turning a blind eye to the true problems lying within the bone grinder, Debian wondered why the facility was not shut after seven of its workers reportedly died of lung cancer.
“The health minister has requested shutting down the bone grinder many times, why is it still operating?” he asked, accusing the governor of targeting the fish market because of his "inability" to order the closure of the grinder.
Both Debian and the unionist stressed that there was no problem in sanitation inside the fish market.
“We have a contract with a company specialized in sanitation, which has three employees working in the market every day,” Debian said.
Beirut Governor Ziad Chebib, who accompanied security forces during a surprise raid on the market Thursday before ordering its closure, said the facility contained insects and rats.
“The rats he talked about come from the grinder, and they do not even enter the market,” the union leader said, explaining that most of the problems that the governor pointed at were minor, but were being dealt with.
“The bone grinder is still operating, but if it remains so then we will be suing its owner and the people operating it,” the union leader warned.
