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Proliferation of substandard goods must be checked
2006-05-10 08:41:19
By Editor
While welcoming globalization and its positive rub off on the economy, Tanzanians should now be concerned of its potent evil in the form of imported substandard goods flooding the local market.
The situation is so bad that it is posing a grave danger to the country as there is virtually no sector of our economy which has not been spared of the infiltration.
Unlike in the past when we confidently bought items , today, people are not certain whether what they are buying is genuine, because the market is flooded with all types of substandard goods, including garments, motor vehicle spare parts, lubricants, agro products such as seeds and fertilisers, domestic appliances and medicines.
As for drugs, some of the marketed counterfeits are not only substandard, but extremely dangerous to use. This should surely raise an alarm to the concerned authorities because it involves people’s lives.
The vice is perpetuated by unscrupulous business persons, who have allowed themselves – no doubt through corruption along the line — to degenerate to the lowest moral standards.
It’s time something was done to protect the population from the onslaught of high-tech marketing of these substandard products.
Last March, while on a visit to the offices of the Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) offices, Members of the Parliamentary Investments Committee (PIC) and Trade expressed concern over the high influx of substandard and low quality foodstuffs in the country.
The Bunge panel was concerned that food imports were of substandard and exposed Tanzanian consumers to hazards like cancer, high blood pressure, cardiac dysfunction, diabetes, etc.
The MPs’ concerns were prompted by a public outcry over uncontrolled stocking of substandard food in supermarkets and hotels.
TBS is one of the gate valves that is empowered by legislation to ensure that substandard goods never find space in the shelves of our shops or on the hands of petty traders.
However, the opposite seems to be the order of things.
Perhaps one exemplary case in which TBS cannot escape censure happened in 1997, when it approved substandard speed governors following a government legislation that enforced the use of these speed controlling devices in passenger buses.
The approved gadgets could control speed alright, but had one great flaw – they were not tamper-proof.
Bus crews easily tampered with them and the vehicles travelled at whatever speed their drivers preferred – often breakneck.
The result was that human toll from road accidents involving the speeding buses continued unabated.
In addition, it needed an army of traffic cops on our highways to enforce the speed-governor rule.
At the moment, the directive is as good as dead.
Apart from TBS, there is also COTECNA, which has been contracted by TRA to pre-inspect Tanzania bound goods at their countries of origin.
How can we absolve this firm from wrongdoing while our shops are flooded with imported goods of very poor quality? Unless they tell us it is none of their business, we can’t help but ask them why is our country a dumping ground?
We think it is time the government acted swiftly and arrested the situation, to spare this country the shame of being a dumping ground for substandard goods.
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