Company Secretary of the Continental Group of Companies Mohamed S Ali has told Stabroek Business that the company is persuaded that the Government Analyst Food and Drugs Department (GAFDD) is doing the best with the resources at its disposal in the wake of the challenge which it faces in curbing the proliferation of fake products into Guyana.
Ally was speaking in the wake of the unearthing of the importation of fake consignments of the popular food seasoning monosodium glutamate (MSG), a product of the Aji-No-Moto company, which has impacted negatively on the distribution level of the original product. Continental Group of Companies is the sole distributor of MSG manufactured by the Aji-No-Moto subsidiary in Brazil and imported into Guyana.
On Wednesday at the distribution giant’s Industrial Estate headquarters Ally told Stabroek Business that Continental had notified officials of Aji-No-Moto’s Brazilian operations of the presence on the local market of supplies of its MSG, other than that imported into Guyana by the Continental Group. Representatives of the manufacturers, Ally said, had visited Guyana and subsequently confirmed that the other product being marketed here was in fact a fake product.
The appearance on the local market of the fake product adds further pressure to what is widely believed to be a seriously under-resourced GAFDD though the Agency’s Director Marlan Cole confirmed for this newspaper some weks ago that the authorities had been successful in removing some of the fake imported product from the market. Ally confirmed that it appeared that the extent of the distribution of the fake product may be shrinking. “We are satisfied that we are getting good cooperation from Food and Drugs,” Ally told Stabroek Business.
The Continental top official says that whereas the company’s customary distribution level of the product had stood at one 20-ft container monthly, that had been reduced to one such container every two and a half months, a distribution drop of more than 50 per cent. Ally said Continental had made the discovery of the fake product more than a year ago and was concerned that its “name and reputation” did not become besmirched by the present fake products issue.
