Douglas Runyowa, the Chief Director for Commerce in the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, has said nearly 50% of groceries seized from tuck shops and vending stalls during the ongoing crackdown on counterfeit and smuggled goods in Zimbabwe are fake and potentially harmful to health.

Speaking before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Industry and Commerce on Tuesday, Runyowa expressed concern over the growing problem of counterfeit products in Zimbabwe, saying the situation has reached alarming levels. He said (via ZimLive):

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.

Our health authorities have not certified some of those goods as safe and fit for human consumption, hence we really need to intensify our efforts through an all-stakeholder approach and it is a fight that would also be needed for our portfolio committee to help us intensify, because really what is out there is quite scary.

Runyowa revealed that the counterfeit products seized include fake Vaseline, flour, rice, and toothpaste. He said:

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 per cent of the products did not comply. You can actually see fake Vaseline, fake flour, fake rice, fake toothpaste, and this is an alarming rate.

You will be aware that over the last quarter, going back to October, there has been an 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.

Runyowa called on Parliament to lend its support in the ongoing battle against the spread of counterfeit products.