The President of the Consumer Protection Agency
(CPA) Ibrahim Kabia has confirmed that very soon parliament will enact the
consumer protection bill into law.
He made this disclosure in an interview saying that the Minister of Trade and Industry gave an assurance that soon the bill which is out will be put to parliament for enactment, to further protect both consumers and the business community.
This is as a result of public concerns over the arrival of food products that go bad while awaiting clearance down at the Quay.
Mr Kabia recalled that after the dumping of the first container of bad chicken, which caused scramble at the Kissy dump site, another three containers of bad chicken also arrived, but with collective efforts and proper planning, it was disposed of quietly somewhere in Freetown without creating public scramble.
The CPA President added that there is now a consumer protection committee in which the Office of National Security (ONS) is the lead, and after several brain storming a standard operations procedure (SOP) is now in place to handle all frozen and canned food products coming into the Country.
He said in the committee, the Standards Bureau as well as the Sierra Leone Police are represented, and from now on all imported food products, should get approval from the committee.
On the issue why there is a repeat of expired chicken into the country, Mr Kabia explained that it is not that the chicken came in rotten, it was reported that all frozen products from Brazil takes 45 days to arrive, and these products are placed in refrigerated containers, which have a time frame for the gas that powers the containers to go down, and this was what happened down at the quay.
As a result the refill machine to keep the containers running, while papers are being processed for removal from the port also went down and there is no technical expert to carry out repairs to refill gas on the containers.
This was the reason why four containers of frozen chicken went bad and have to be dumped, but because the containers were insured, the shipping line took the responsibility to pay insurance for losses, including the fees to dump the expired products.
On Public education to raise the level of awareness on expired products, the CPA President said most times business people see consumer activists as a nuisance, while consumer activists see business people as rogues and cheats who only care about making profit and not observing customer care, which is key.
Mr Kabbia stressed that the CPA was established in 1995 to promote trade and commerce and at the same time seek the welfare of the public, in terms of safety, storage and hygiene of both food and other materials, therefore it will continue its work to ensure that citizens get their monies worth from both edibles and non-edibles.
Source: Awoko
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