The Guyana National Bureau of Standards and the Food and Drugs Analyst Department are two of the country’s more important monitoring agencies and in recent years the critical importance of their respective roles have become increasingly apparent.
These two agencies share the responsibility for monitoring food, drug, electrical, toy and other imports into Guyana to ensure their compliance with safety standards, labeling requirements that identify their origin and manufacturing standards which help to determine both safety and quality.
There are several reasons why these two agencies are important to Guyana. Not least among these reasons are, first, the fact that the manufacture of counterfeit drugs, dangerous toys and sub-standard utility goods have become a commonplace international practice; secondly, that developing countries are target markets for these sub-standard goods and, thirdly, that countries like Guyana with porous borders are uniquely vulnerable to imports that evade the scrutiny of official ports of entry.
Then there is the practice by some importers of sourcing ‘dated’ items, particularly food items, acquiring these at ‘knock down’ prices, removing and/or replacing the expiry dates and selling them to unsuspecting consumers. Even in those cases where the expiry date is left on the items, the prices are often sufficiently ‘reasonable’ to cause the consumer to either ignore or overlook the fact that the marked expiry dates have passed.
The situation has now become particularly serious in the cases of drugs and toys and during this year we learnt of major developments in both industries where counterfeit drugs and dangerous toys were being manufactured and aggressively marketed across the world. In one particular case, toys manufactured in China were recalled.
Invariably, alarm bells in relation to these transgressions are first sounded in the United States and other developed countries where ports of entry are most vigilant and where high-tec testing facilities are available to help in the discovery of dangerous and/or sub-standard goods.
Things are simply not the same in Guyana and in other developing countries where receipt of information often comes long after the danger is actually discovered. Some time ago Stabroek Business was informed of a case in which an item of food was discovered to be possibly dangerous to human health only after quantities of that item had already been imported into Guyana, sold and consumed.
Neither the GNBS nor the Food and Drug Department can be said to be adequately staffed and equipped to effectively pursue these onerous responsibilities and when one considers what is now widely believed to be an alarmingly high level of illegally imported items that reach the consumer in Guyana, one shudders to think of the enormous risk to which the population is continually exposed. The attendant risks become even more apparent when one considers that Guyana is part of a highly liberalized international trading regime in which import restrictions are virtually non-existent.
Progress in the strengthening of the capacity of these two agencies to execute their mandate effectively has been painfully slow. The GNBS, for example, has only recently established a formal presence at the Timehri Airport and its chronic lack of capacity to monitor trans-border transgressions is painfully apparent. Additionally, and as the GNBS has admitted, the agency lacks the scientific capacity to make important determinations associated with safety and health standards. The situation of the Food and Drugs Department – as Stabroek Business has already pointed out – is even worse.
In the short-term there would appear to be no comprehensive solution to the problem of monitoring imports, particularly as far as illegal trans-border imports are concerned. A strong case exists, nonetheless, for significantly strengthening the human resource and technical capacity of these two departments in the interest of reducing the prevailing importation free-for-all, the exploitation of consumers and the endangering of the health and safety of the citizens including, particularly at this time of the year, the safety of children.
