If you also believe that second hand ‘home-used’ products are more durable, cheaper than and superior to quality brand new ones, you are welcome. You just joined the new suicide bombers terrorist cell of ‘Shoddy Consumer Products Patriots (SHOCPPAT)’. Ghana, apparently, is more worried about SHOCPPAT members than coup d’etat planners. The new menace of shoddy consumer products and their nonchalant patronage by uninformed or otherwise indifferent bargain-hunting Ghanaian consumers is generating an unhealthy workforce for the posterity of this nation.
Consumer Terrorists
Many in Ghana have questioned the role of consumer protection groups, consumer advocates and consumer activists in the country in the face of shoddy goods and services at 50. The same people questioning are the very ones patronising these shoddy goods and services given all the many quality alternatives. It is not surprising that it is even the so-called high-class shopping malls or supermarkets that are peddling in expired reengineered luxury goods.
Some major rice importers in the country are rebagging expired rice in newly dated sacks- freshly sealed. If you have been discovering the weevils in your perfumed rice with a 5 years to expiry date, join the club. Frozen fish is thawed, painted, and sold as fresh and when unsold at the end of the day it is refrozen to conceal its discoloured decay and resold to members of the terrorist cell, SHOCPPAT, who cannot tell the difference between fresh fish and a singing sea bass mould.
When consumers are undiscerning in their choice of products on the market due to either ignorance, indifference or lack of consumer education, it is not just the individuals that may suffer the consequences but also neighbours and the nation as a whole. Cases in point are the prevalence of fake electrical products and junkyard rusty-leaky second hand LPG bottles. Both cause fire and burn more than just the owners and their properties. The patriots of these two arson products are the worst terrorists ever, not necessarily the ones George Bush is worried about, but those that our ‘Castle’ should probably be paranoid about.
Read the Label, if you are illiterate
Labelling is essential for the information of consumers. Consumers need to know what, where, when and how the product is to be used for their own health and safety. When products are used wrongly because of bad labelling, the company involved may be liable for damages but the effect on the life of the consumer may be irreversible. Food labelling is one area that Ghanaian consumers may ignore due to their familiarity with the products but it is one area that is having an adverse effect on their health and safety. There are two main objectives in food legislation - the protection of the consumer and ensuring that food and its ingredients are correctly described - and labelling is the key to both. The label should tell you some, or all, of the following:
1. The name and address of the manufacturer – so you know who to complain to if something is wrong
2. The name of the food (e.g. Cheese and Tomato Pizza)
3. The weight of the food (e.g. 250g) - this will help you to compare food from different companies and work out which is the best value for money.
4. Instructions on how to store it (e.g. keep in a fridge)
5. Instructions on how to cook it (e.g. 450F/230C for 20 minutes)
6. A list of ingredients (e.g. sugar, cheese, flour, flavouring etc) - it is important to know what is in the food you eat, especially if you are allergic to certain ingredients or want to avoid too many additives in your food.
'Best Before...'can only be used on foods which have a minimum life greater than six weeks and that cannot be affected by micro biological deterioration - breakfast cereals, frozen food and tinned food are good examples. Tinned food does not last indefinitely - ingredients such as tomato sauce for example can attack the protective coating of the tin.
'Use By...' warning on a food label must not be ignored as it indicates that the food is high risk and could probably cause food poisoning if eaten after the indicated date - examples are high protein foods like fresh meat pies, sausages and dairy products. Products that have the 'Use By' date must always be handled with great care, particularly in warm weather when micro-organisms grow at an accelerated rate. It is also important to remember that contaminated food will not necessarily smell 'off' or taste bad. So what happens to illiterate consumers in this case? Your guess may be as bad as mine.
Who wears the Crown?
How often do you not see street vendors selling a diary product, that require storage in a cool dry place, in the heat of the sun right near the offices of the manufacturer? After a week of bronzing these heat-sensitive consumer products in the sun, some lactose-sucking adult consumer buys them in traffic, three a pesewa, in exchange for the health and safety of all their family. African germs may not kill, but ignorance and indifference do- slowly… Do not blame some of us consumer advocates for your witting, narcissist-self-destructive suicide consumer bomb of inaction when you are down. Certainly, the companies do not care about the state of their product at the point of consumption otherwise they would take the pains to educate the peddlers as to the conditions of sale of their produce- call a sachet/bottled water and a milk producer and do not forget about the regulators either.
Yes, consumers in Ghana are kings as long as they carry the manufacturers and distributors in palanquins, an unfortunate role reversal in a comedy of sorts. As long as the manufacturers know we are willing to make them richer however shoddy their products, Ghanaian consumers shall enviously watch them wear our crown while we kowtow in genuflection to their whims.
0800-Complain
When was the last time you picked up the phone, called a company consumer hotline (if there was any on their product) and complained about their shoddy product or wrote to them with copies to the regulator of the sector, be it the Food and Drugs Board (FDB) or the Ghana Standards Board (GSB) or other and a Consumer Protection Organisation?
Anytime companies advertise their products aggressively, however shoddy, consumers can only make an impact in reaction to such unethical practices by equitably complaining insistently. Without consumer complaints, manufacturers, regulators, and policy makers all assume that everything is all right even though they may have personally experienced that shoddy product or service. Consumer protection organisations rely on a database of consumer complaints in order to confront the appropriate authorities in charge of regulating a particular sector before they can influence policy.
Most companies in Ghana lack a complaints management system as part of their quality assurance mechanism and ethical business practices. They, thus, make it more difficult for consumers to complain about their unsatisfactory products and services. Consumer protection is a vocabulary they do not want to hear forgetting that customer care in itself is a consumer protection measure from an internal orientation. With the introduction of toll free numbers by Ghana Telecom, we are looking forward to seeing many of these organisations grab some complaints hotlines at no cost to the consumer. Consumer complaints, after all, is valuable feedback for any forward thinking organisation.
Only a vibrant complaints culture can force businesses, regulators and policy makers to act so join the bandwagon. Complain (but do not forget to boycott that shoddy product) and add your voice to the quest for high quality product and service standards for a higher standard of living in Ghana. A healthy people make a healthy nation.
*The author is a Consumer Advocate and he can be reached at Http://www.theconsumerpartnership.org
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