Yesterday, I wrote to Trade, Industry and Competition Minister, Ebrahim Patel asking him to furnish me the legal advice he relied on to pronounce that cooked food is not allowed ‘as the law stands’.
In the amended lockdown regulations, there is nothing that prohibits the production or sale of cooked food and thus the Democratic Alliance (DA) believes that the Minister has overstepped his powers by simply pronouncing that retailers may not sell cooked or prepared food.
This absurd determination by Minister Patel is illogical and ill-considered. It follows a pattern of late by certain Ministers which seek to de-legitimise the lockdown by advancing regulations that make no sense and are not found in law.
The latest pronouncement by Government will have detrimental consequences for frontline health care workers, members of the security services, essential service workers and transport workers like truck drivers who rely on cooked food due to the work they are doing.
This will also be particularly devastating for the elderly who may be unable to cook food due to their frailty.
Therefore, the DA has given Minister Patel until 17:00 today to explain in writing what his rationale was to summarily pronounce on the regulations to ban the sale of cooked or prepared food.
At the same time, we are also consulting with our legal team to obtain a legal opinion on the legality of Minister Patel’s actions.
We can not allow Ministers to arbitrarily undermine the lockdown by acting outside of the mandate which is what we are now currently seeing.