Management of Marwako Fast Food Limited says it intends to request for an independent investigation into the cases of suspected food poisoning brought against its East Legon branch in Accra.
It follows preliminary investigations by the Food and Drugs Authority showing that samples of food and some juice drinks from various branches of the eatery were contaminated.
The FDA also laments how efforts to establish the prime cause of contamination were hampered by “the unapproved and unilateral decision of Marwako Fast Food Limited to destroy some food items” in the course of the investigation.
But Marwako Fast Food Limited insists that allegations that it tampered with the ongoing investigation are questionable.
“If you look at one of the paragraphs, FDA indicated that, the process to establish the root cause of the contamination has unfortunately been hampered by our management. This is where we have our bone to pick with the FDA”, says Amin Lamptey, Public Relations Officer of Marwako Fast Food Limited.
He added that, although they welcome the report, it has the tendency to affect their brand and will conduct its own independent inquiry into the incident.
“There are some refrigerated ingredients that you may have to throw away after a day depending on the situation, yet they indicated that the process was hampered. All said and done, Marwako will have to welcome what they have done, although there are problems that can really affect our brand and marketability. But with this decision that they took, we will request for an independent investigation for what happened.”
The FDA has also established that “the levels of sanitation and hygiene in the food preparation areas in all three facilities were poor.”
It has assured that it will continually monitor activities at the various branches to ensure compliance with FDA directives and applicable regulatory requirements.
All branches of Marwako were closed down some weeks ago after some customers complained of falling ill after eating at their branch in East Legon, Accra.
The complaints were sparked by one Edward Elohim, who posted about his illness after eating at Mawarko.
It has applied the appropriate regulatory sanctions and is also monitoring the implementation of the corrective and preventive actions by the management of Marwako Fast Foods to “address all the non-conformances identified to prevent any reoccurrence.”