Residents in Linden have complained about poor quality flour packaged in bags bearing NAMILCO’s Thunderbolt brand being sold in the mining town and the authorities are expected to carry out a full investigation shortly.
“NAMILCO was alerted by complaints from residents of Linden –both bakers and householders – who informed the company that their flour-based products were not “cooking properly.” Their bread and pastries were “discoloured and heavy” and the taste was not acceptable,” a statement from the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) said. The complaints were made in April and NAMILCO did tests on the “counterfeit” flour and found that it was of a substantially poorer quality.
The statement said that the milling company had conducted a search and found one errant shopkeeper located on one of the town’s main thoroughfares. Government’s Food and Drug Analyst Department then conducted its first investigation and confirmed NAMILCO’s complaint. The department is expected to carry out a full investigation shortly, the GMSA said.
The statement said that NAMILCO found that even though the bags carried the NAMILCO brand name—Thunderbolt— they showed evidence of excessive handling. “The top edges were frayed and the thread used to re-stitch the bags was of inferior quality,” the GMSA said. It added that NAMILCO confirmed that the twine (not thread) the company uses, is colour-coded and made of quality material consistent with international food hazard control standards.
The company’s flour bags are double-stitched and the bag of flour weighs 45 kilograms instead of the 39 kilograms contained in the counterfeit product, the statement said.
The GMSA statement said that NAMILCO is urging customers, especially those in Linden, to purchase flour that is white and not grey, and to inspect the stitching on the 45 kg bags to confirm that white and coloured twine were used in the weaving to close the bags.
“Consumers get robbed on weight, quality and price since most shopkeepers sell in pounds and equate 1kg to 2 pounds instead of 2.2 pounds…we have found (consumers) to be very forgiving in this regard,” NAMILCO’s CEO Bert Sukhai was quoted as saying. He said that NAMILCO has been encouraging the Food and Drug Analyst Department to promote the health benefits of factory-packaged products, particularly milk, sugar, flour and other consumables that cannot be `washed’ before use.
The GMSA also urged the department to conduct a nationwide campaign to determine whether consumers in other parts of the country have been sold counterfeit flour. “The Association is concerned that the counterfeit flour, which most likely were not subjected to quality tests, could pose a health hazard to unsuspecting consumers,” GMSA said.
“We will continue to do everything we possibly could to raise consumer awareness of sub-standard products that are flooding the local market, and the dangers these products pose to their health and well-being. Our consumers have to understand that cheaper is not necessarily better,” GMSA President Clinton Williams was quoted as saying.
Director of the Food and Drug Analyst Department Marlon Cole told Stabroek News yesterday that they have launched an investigation and a report is expected to be out by Wednesday.
Cole stated that when they first investigated the incident, the public health officer in Linden was resisted by the shopkeeper and so the investigation was thwarted. But, he said, they received further information from NAMILCO and have since begun working to address the issue. “The first time they didn’t see any evidence of the counterfeit product because the investigation wasn’t carried out in a thorough manner,” he stated.
