“We instructed 91 shops to display prices of commodities and update it regularly,” Narayan Prasad Bidari, director general of DoCSM, said. “Similarly, we instructed 55 shops to keep signboard and another 60 shops to stop selling unlabelled products.”
According to the market inspection report published on Tuesday, the monitoring teams instructed 70 firms, who failed to produce business registration certificates during inspection, to submit their certificates to the authorities concerned. The teams also instructed owners of 30 shops to take standard certificates from Nepal Bureau of Standards and Metrology (NBSM) and install weighing machines in their shops.
Bidari said regular monitoring campaigns conducted by the department has, to some extent, succeeded in raising awareness among both shopkeepers and consumers. “More than 80 percent of the shops that we monitored earlier have corrected their mistakes following our instructions. This is a positive thing,” said Bidari.
According to the report, the monitoring teams instructed 29 shops not to sell date expired products. “During our monitoring, we found these shops selling more than 33 different varieties of expired products,” said Bidari.
The products included beverages like Coca Cola, Fanta, Sprite, Mountain Dew, Mirinda, Pepsi and Orange Squash. “The shops were also found selling expired biscuits, noodles, Horlicks, Complan, cakes, chocolates, fried puffed noodles, spices, ginger paste, oil, papad and sauce, among others,” said Mohan Chandra Joshi, market investigation officer at DoCSM.
During the period, the monitoring teams instructed 41 hotels, restaurants and sweet shops to maintain hygiene and 33 firms to register either in VAT or PAN and issue bills.
“We ordered closure of two business firms, collected four samples of food commodities for lab test and filed cases against two firms in Birgunj,” added Joshi
The department ordered closure of Ma Bhagwati Sweets Corner and Shiva´s Hotel in Saptari after they were found selling unhygienic products.
“We are failing to discourage market anomalies to the extent we have wanted because of the lack of strong laws and proper punishment for the guilty,” officials said.
The Forum for Protection of Consumer Rights has suggested that the government amend Consumer Protection Act so that market monitoring teams can punish wrongdoers on the spot.
Case filed against two Birgunj firms
KATHMANDU: The Department of Commerce and Supply Management (DoCSM) has filed separate cases against two firms of Birgunj, charging them of cheating consumers.
The department has filed cases against Megha Food Products and Nikesh Kumar Gupta under Consumer Protection Act.
According to Dashrath Gautam, legal officer at DoCSM, the department moved court against Megha Food Products as it was found packing locally manufactured chocolates in the wrapper of Alpenliebe - a popular Indian brand.
Likewise, the department filed the case against Nikesh Kumar Gupta, accusing him changing foot rings of LPG cylinders.
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