‘We don’t guarantee product functionality’

Golden Sibanda Senior Business Reporter—

BUREAU Veritas, the French company contracted by Government to assess the quality of imported products, says its certification does not guarantee product functionality, as assessment only evaluates conformity to standards.This comes against growing complaints from commerce and industry that the mandatory testing of imported products, to curb influx of inferior products was causing costly delays. The complaints lodged by the business community saw Vice Present Emmerson Mnangagwa pledging that Government would interrogate the situation.

Local businesses, through Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce have since made formal submission to Government for the issue of delays to be addressed. It has since emerged that Bureau Veritas focus on conformity to standards and not a guarantee of good product condition.

This also comes as substandard imported products continue to find their way into Zimbabwe. Bureau Veritas said screening imports for quality standards was a process and benefits would be discernible over time.

The French company’s vice president Tony Mouwad said certification by Bureau Veritas attests to compliance to standard specifications and not condition of functionality of a product or consignment to have been inspected.

Mr Mouwad was recently in Zimbabwe to discuss the issue of delays to importing. Responding to an enquiry if his company would take liability where defective products find their way into the country after assessment by Bureau Veritas, he said they only test for conformity to standards.

He also said the inspection of products before they are shipped into Zimbabwe was essentially a risk management process to prevent dumping and or importation of unsafe or poor quality products into Zimbabwe.

To the extent that it was not practically possible to test, especially with respect to items such as automobile machinery, equipment or electrical goods, the working order of a products when assessing, Bureau Veritas could not be responsible if the product does not function.

“CBC is about sub-standard products; so what we are saying (after certification) is that the product you were sold by your supplier was not sub-standard. As you would imagine, it takes a process. If we open a consignment of say 10 000 globes, do not need to go item by item checking, it is impossible,” he said.

“Otherwise your business will be killed totally.

“In terms of the principles of CBC, testing is (only) risk management; to determine level of compliance of your supplier we test samples,” Mr Mouwad said.

“If you ask us to test item by item, we can do that, but there will be delays yet this is a risk management process, we cannot open every product that you buy, out of 10 000 bulbs, we may need to test 10 or 20.

The admission by Bureau Veritas that the company does not take liability for defective products, although its tests them for quality, comes against the backdrop where suppliers of imported products have had their clients insisting to go and assess products prior to them being imported.

According to some of the importers, they have argued that Bureau Veritas consignment based conformity assessment already took care of the quality and state of functionally issues that the clients wanted to check.