Cambodia arrests 13 over tainted rice wine

[geovalin]

PHNOM PENH, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia has arrested 13 people in southern Kandal province's Lvea Em district for allegedly producing and selling methanol-laced rice wine that had killed at least 12 people, a local police chief said on Friday. "Two rice wine producers and 11 vendors have been arrested and sent to the Kandal provincial court for legal action over this fatal case," Colonel Lak Mengthy, chief of Kandal provincial police's minor crimes bureau, told Xinhua.

 

Twelve people in two villages of Sarika Keo commune had subsequently died between May 8 and 19 after consuming the tainted wine, the health ministry said in a statement on Thursday, adding that nine others remained hospitalized. "The victims had the same symptoms such as headache, cough, stomachache, dizziness, eye irritation, convulsion and breathing difficulty," the ministry said.

 

The ministry added that the deceased victims had been tested negative for COVID-19, but laboratory tests of the wine they had consumed found that the wine contained high levels of methanol, which was far in excess of the safe limit of 0.1 percent. Meanwhile, the ministry also called on people not to drink wines that have no clear source or have been produced without a proper technique. Rice wine is popular in Cambodia's rural areas due to its cheap price. In November, methanol-laced rice wine also left seven persons dead in the country's central Kampong Chhnang province.

 

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/asiapacific/2021-05/21/c_139961291.htm