The Hohoe Magistrate Court has convicted a 31-year-old pub owner and her 19-year-old shop attendant for selling expired drinks, accumulating refuse behind the business premises, and selling food under insanitary conditions. 

Christabel Afornorfe and Theodora Kornu respectively pleaded guilty to the charges and were convicted on their own pleas. 

Afornorfe was sentenced to a fine of GHS 600 or serve one month in prison if she defaults, while Kornu was sentenced to sign a bond of good behaviour for three years. 

Prosecuting Officer, Mr Daniel Dotse Eklo, Environmental Health Analyst, told the Court presided over by Mr Lambert Y. Keriba, the relieving judge, that Afornorfe was the owner of Christabel Pub and Bar Ltd and Kornu was her employee. 

He said that on July 14, sanitary inspectors, during routine inspections at the business premises, discovered that the convicts were selling expired drinks to the public, dumping refuse from the business just behind the premises, and selling drinks and operating a Pub and a Bar without a medical certificate of fitness. 

Mr Eklo said they were educated and served to abate the nuisances and to report to the Environmental Office to be assisted in undergoing medical screening to continue selling, but they failed. 

He said a follow-up inspection was conducted on July 22 to ascertain compliance with the abatement, only to realise that neither the education nor the abatement notices meant anything to the convicts; meanwhile, their expired items were confiscated as evidence. 

Mr Eklo said the action of the convicts was a threat to public health, especially unsuspecting customers, and could lead to food poisoning and outbreaks of foodborne diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, and Hepatitis A.