The road­side ven­dor ac­cused of sell­ing pota­toes tak­en from the Clax­ton Bay land­fill has been grant­ed $20,000 bail.

Ra­jin­dera Ali, 35, of En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, plead­ed not guilty be­fore a Ch­agua­nas mag­is­trate yes­ter­day. He is due to reap­pear on Ju­ly 20.

Ali was ar­rest­ed on Tues­day along Narsa­loo Ra­maya Road, near Price Plaza, af­ter al­leged­ly ad­mit­ting he got sacks of pota­toes from the dump.

He was charged with lit­ter­ing and il­le­gal pitch­ing of a stall. Po­lice say they are await­ing pub­lic health test re­sults be­fore press­ing fur­ther charges.

Act­ing head of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice Ser­vice, ACP Wayne Mys­tar, told Guardian Me­dia of­fi­cers con­tin­ue to work close­ly with rel­e­vant reg­u­la­to­ry and pub­lic health au­thor­i­ties to ad­dress mat­ters in­volv­ing pub­lic health, food safe­ty, and un­law­ful vend­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

Mys­tar added that while they do not com­ment on spe­cif­ic op­er­a­tional ac­tiv­i­ties, he can con­firm that mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers will con­tin­ue to con­duct in­spec­tions and en­force­ment ex­er­cis­es.

“We en­cour­age mem­bers of the pub­lic to pur­chase food prod­ucts from rep­utable ven­dors and to re­port any con­cerns re­gard­ing sus­pect­ed un­safe food prac­tices to the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties,” he said.

Mean­while, Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed an­nounced that he will meet with the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health and oth­er agen­cies to de­vise a com­pre­hen­sive plan to pre­vent sim­i­lar in­ci­dents.