Ministry boss says 50 percent groceries sold in Zim tuck shops are fake goods

By Staff Reporter

A top official with the Ministry of Industry and Commerce has told parliament that nearly 50 percent of products being sold in Zimbabwe’s sprouting tuckshops and vending stalls were counterfeit goods which pose potential health hazards to the population.

Speaking while giving oral evidence before parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Industry and Commerce on Tuesday, chief director for commerce in the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Douglas Runyowa said tests conducted on goods being sold at the spaza shops have revealed what he described as shocking.

“I would like to, not to scare you, but to advise you that we recently carried out a survey with the Standards Association of Zimbabwe where we went and bought products from the shelf and took them for testing and compared what was written in the results; 50 percent of the products did not comply.

“You can actually see fake Vaseline, fake flour, fake rice, fake toothpaste, and this is an alarming rate,” he said.

Runyowa said authorities have taken the approach to destroy goods seized from tuck shops during an ongoing blitz on fake and smuggled products.

The blitz began last year.

“You will be aware that over the last quarter, going back to October, there has been intensified blitz against counterfeit goods, against smuggled goods, so much so that even this afternoon we are actually destroying about four tonnes of goods that were actually confiscated during that practice, to ensure that we remove them from the shelves, because we cannot guarantee our people that they are actually consuming safe goods,” he said.

The ministry official appealed for support from parliament in efforts to end the rot.

“We want to also join hands with you in this particular fight, which we have really intensified from our side as a ministry,” he said.

“Most of what we have seen in the informal sector is quite shocking, and in our awareness programmes, we are saying it might be cheap but it’s coming at an expense to your health, because we cannot guarantee what is not there.”

Ordinary Zimbabweans have turned to acquiring some of their groceries from the tuckshops as most of them are cheaper and imported products mostly from neighbouring South Africa.

The proliferation of both tuck shops and cheap products being sold from the spaza shops has seen big retail shops suffer as locals turn to what is favourable to their pockets.

Some big supermarket chains have since closed shops or scaled down operations because of competition from the cheaper products.