The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) says it has uncovered ‘ghost’ sachet water factories in Yola, Adamawa state.
Mr Gonzuk Nyor, the Adamawa Coordinator of the agency disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria ( NAN) in Yola, on Thursday.
Nyor said that the water from the factories were seen in the town, but the locations of the factories or their time of production remained unknown to the agency.
” There are a lot of sachet water manufacturers without proper addresses , sometimes these people produced water in the night.
” If you go to the facilities, you will not see anybody and nothing is happening in the factories, but still their water is seen in the town.
“As matter of fact, there are some places we went to and we discovered that the factories had been turned into residential houses,“ Nyor said.
The coordinator, who expressed worry over the development, said that the agency was working to arrest the situation, through intelligence gathering, adding that already, three water factories had been sealed in the state, following the expiration and non-renewal of their production licences.
Nyor said that there were over 200 registered water manufacturers in the state and the agency had ensured that the producers maintained Good Manufacturing Practices ( GMP), because it was found that some of the manufacturers, after being registered and numbered, they deviated from what they were licensed for.
“During inspection, we identified some factories that their licences had expired for the past four years, but were still producing water”, he said.
He added that the agency had given directives to its officers to lock all factories whose licence had expired and have did not renewed, calling on the public to assist the agency with useful and confidential information about the activities of unregistered water factories in the state.
The primary assignment of the agency was to protect Nigerians from unwholesome products that were harmful to human health, Nyor said, as he emphasised that the agency would ensure that only healthy and certified foods and drinks were allowed to be sold in Nigeria.
