Tinaye Agere
Sunday Mail Reporter
Standrick Chagadama
THE Consumer Protection Commission (CPC) has fined 362 retail shops for selling counterfeit, expired and underweight products during the first six months of the year in a crackdown that covered five provinces.
Plans are underway to introduce heavy fines that deter retailers from breaking the law.
The consumer watchdog has since established that dairy products, confectionery, beverages, meat, fruits and vegetables were the most affected goods.
Underweight products ranged from sugar, kapenta, rice, bread to instant porridge. Some retailers also reportedly continued to sell expired goods such as non-alcoholic beverages, vegetables and fruits.
The probe, which identified Mbare as a key source of the underweight products, found that some goods weighed less than what was indicated on the labels.
Cartels in Harare’s oldest suburb are understood to be buying goods from manufacturers in correct quantities and then repackaging them with less content before selling them.
It was also established that beverages sold in informal shops account for an overwhelming majority of expired goods available on the market. Not only do such practices violate consumer protection laws, but they pose serious health risks as well.
In an interview with The Sunday Mail, CPC chairperson Dr Mthokozisi Nkosi said: “We have partnered with trade industry experts to help us in the blitz to take down the culprits. We are working closely with the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, which helped us with weighing the underweight goods, check expiry dates and the validity of other perishable goods to see if they were fresh or not.”
He added: “We also got help from the Trade Measures Department, which checks the products in the retail shops to see if they are not short of the quantity declared or deceptive and misleading packaging.
“They even helped us check the scales that are used to measure the weight of vegetables, fruits, meat and buns to see if they were reading the actual weight of the goods without making errors.
“We have established that this is one of the most common practices used by rogue retailers to short-change customers.”
The malpractices, said Dr Nkosi, were most prevalent in shops located in Harare, Bulawayo and Mutare. He said the CPC had collected up to US$11 000 in fines from the retailers.
“The total amount of money we collected from all the 362 retails shops during our blitz is about US$11 000, which is almost nothing to the retailers, so they keep on doing the malpractices, which they are benefitting immensely from.”
The selling of underweight goods, he added, had become prevalent.
“We fined each retail shop we found breaking the law up to US$35 each or the equivalent in ZiG. We feel this is too little as it does not deter such behaviour.
“We are working on new measures to introduce heavy fines, which will deter the retailers that are breaking the law. We want them to feel the pinch.”
In a separate interview, Industry and Commerce Minister Mangaliso Ndlovu said the Government was planning a major blitz to eliminate counterfeit products from the local market.
“You would realise that the devastating effects of sanctions left our industries suffering and struggling to compete because of the barriers brought about by these sanctions,” said Minister Ndlovu.
“We have had to take deliberate steps to nurture these upcoming industries by controlling what comes through our ports of entry.
“Our next fight will be to eradicate smuggling and selling of counterfeit goods; this illicit practice is surely destined for doom as we will soon unleash the might of the law . . .”
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