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Tambala Food Products Limited has warned its customers to be careful when buying its products, especially salt, saying there are packets of counterfeit Tambala Table Salt selling mostly in local grocery shops.
Tambala Foods woke up to the rude awakening after a consumer took to their offices a counterfeit packet of iodised table salt bought from a shop in Blantyre’s Chilobwe Township.
Tambala Foods Sales and Marketing Manager Ayanja Mkandawire said on Tuesday some unscrupulous business people are producing the company’s products and selling them at a cheaper price using their brand name.
She warned consumers against buying the counterfeit salt packets which have some red marks on them, saying such salt poses a health risk to consumers since there is no evidence it undergoes tests as regulated by the Malawi Bureau of Standards (MBS), the Ministry of Health, the Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
“[The manufacturers] do not have the consumers’ welfare at heart. They are only after making profits. Most consumers look at the cheap price and they buy without looking at the outcome [of using salt with no or less iodine content] which is goitre,” she said.
Lack of iodine in salt poses grave health risk to the consumers, particularly children, as it exposes them to the risk of developing iodine deficiency disorders which may be seen through mental retardation in children, irreversible brain damage in the unborn babies, infertility and sluggishness in adults.
Apart from consumers and registered producers, government is also a victim of the counterfeits as it loses tax revenue since the fake manufacturers do not pay tax.
Tambala is not the first company to complain about counterfeit products in the country as several others, mostly in the bodycare—soaps, shoe polish and lotions—have also been hit hard.
Most of the affected companies, Cama and the Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry have lamented outdated and weak laws against the malpractice.
For example, when one is found guilty of producing counterfeit products the fines range from between K5,000 and K50,000.
The private sector is currently lobbying for a review of the laws to provide stiffer penalties to deter would-be perpetrators of the malpractice.
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