The government decision to ban the sale of chicken shawerma is not only costly but lacks understanding. Furthermore, policies by successive Cabinets may have been behind the deterioration of the quality of this popular meal and the cleanliness of some of the restaurants that provide it.
After more than 200 people suffered from food poisoning and one person died (with the cause of death yet to be officially determined) upon consuming shawerma at a restaurant in Baqaa, the government banned the sale of chicken shawerma throughout the Kingdom. A government official proclaimed the decision as “studied and not spontaneous”.
The 600 restaurants affected by the decision claim a loss of JD100,000 per day - so far they have lost more than JD1 million. Should the ban continue longer, many shops will close permanently and never be able to open again. Even if the public ban decision is reversed sometime in the future, the public fear and negative propaganda generated from such an obvious overreaction to one isolated incident will cost the restaurants several million dinars in revenues and profits.
Things never happen in isolation. The government decision came immediately after polluted water in Mansheyet Bani Hassan, last month, made hundreds of people sick. The government seemed to react slowly to fixing water supply pipes to this Mafraq village and another poverty-stricken area where people cannot afford bottled water. It also failed to immediately make available an alternative water supply to the people of Mansheyet Bani Hassan, even after the toll reached 2,000 cases with hospitalisation periods averaging 8-10 days per person. The government was not forgiven for initially downplaying the incident as a simple case of non-life threatening diarrhoea. The consequence was that two ministers lost their posts.
Is it possible that the swift action regarding the shawerma incident emanated from the performance in Mansheyet Bani Hassan? It is a possibility, as all restaurant owners, a heavily scrutinised group by a myriad of government inspectors, are voiceless with no negotiation power when it comes to dealing with the authorities and can be easily shut down?
I recall one incident when Jordan, fearing cholera, banned the making of Arabic ice cream and never reversed the policy even after determining that the cause of several cholera incidents was water and not ice cream. Many Arabic ice cream makers closed down and never attempted to open again. The skill and product, handmade Arabic ice cream, have since disappeared. One of the first things that Jordanians do when visiting Syria is to flock to famous Arabic ice cream makers to taste the product they once enjoyed in their country.
However, the shawerma and water incidents are inherently different. Unlike the water conduit where the government water provider supplied water from one source to all, one restaurant does not make all the shawerma in Jordan. Levels of cleanliness vary from one restaurant to another, which is why the Ministry of Health and the food and health officials are supposed to spot-check each restaurant separately.
Moreover, restaurants that produce shawerma are faced with a policy-induced failure whose roots could be traced back to other economic policies. The rising cost of propane gas canisters, which doubled in the last year, makes it more expensive to make shawerma. Rising costs of imported meat, especially lamb, since the dinar is losing value in face of other non-US dollar pegged currencies, has made chicken shawerma more profitable than lamb shawerma. The recent arm-twisting tactic employed by the Sales Tax Department, requesting that restaurants reduce prices by 20 per cent in order to have the sales tax upon them lifted, has caused many to lower costs by re-refrigerating leftover shawerma overnight, not disposing of bad mayonnaise, and using cheaper or expired ingredients, including meat. In other words, past policies have induced what economists know as a case of “moral hazard”.
In this game of cat and mouse between government and restaurants, the consumer suffers. There is no consumer protection law in Jordan. Consumers, negatively impacted by the negligence of the private and public sectors have no proper legal recourse for indemnification. If consumers are given the right to sue, not only restaurants that use low quality products that lead to harming their welfare but also negligent doctors, contractors, government officials, etc., the cost of cleanliness becomes a necessary component of the production cost of the service provider. While health inspectors continue to play an important role, insurance companies that insure producers against third-party liability come to play an important role. Negligence is penalised by higher insurance premiums, making the negligent service provider unable to produce competitively.
A consumer protection law is obviously a superior solution to closing down the whole sector over an isolated incident. In addition, it is more effective than having public health and food safety inspectors bear the entire responsibility of safeguarding the interests of consumers. After all, the whole idea of the economic reform we have espoused during the last two decades was to reduce the discretionary power of bureaucrats - discretionary power leads to corruption, bribes and market-distorting activities.
An extension of the current reaction towards the shawerma-poisoning case is to close down all public hospitals since there are so many incidents of patients attacking physicians and several cases of claimed malpractice; closing roads and highways to reduce traffic accidents; shutting down all industry for fear of hazardous content; closing airports for fear of plane crashes. The list can easily go on. Such policies would never emerge in the developed world because policy makers are accountable to their constituencies and because legal structures compensate the injured parties.
Current economic policies, through the obvious lack of coordination and depth of analysis, are leaving ordinary citizens bewildered as to the future of the economy. No policy should be made without studying its short- and long-term impact on the overall economy. When will the public sector learn that reactionary, ill-studied policies cause more harm than good?
Questions and comments can be directed at: ymansur@enconsult.com
