Posted on June, 21, 2018 at 10:29 am
RESIDENTS of southern regions have been trained on importance of standards, consumer advocacy and counterfeits control, thanks to the efforts made by Fair Competition Commission (FCC) and Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS). The five-day training campaign was concluded in Mtwara Region this week where the public had the opportunity to understand various activities being conducted by the two organisations.
TBS public relations officer, Neema Mtemvu, said yesterday that FCC and standard officials visited traders in their shops, while ordinary people were educated on ways to identify whether products bought had been certified by relevant authority.
"Through this campaign we have visited many shops to educate traders to stick to their responsibilities to market thier products particularly in issues related to quality for their products,” she said.
She also said the campaign provided a good opportunity for the entrepreneurs since they understood a special scheme that was established by TBS in collaboration with SIDO to support SMEs .
According to her, all SMEs which need to get support ought to route their applications through the Small Industries Development Organisation (Sido).
“This organisation knows them better and it provides training prior to applying for the certification from us, it is better they go there first,” she noted.
Available statistics show that until now more than 300 SMEs have benefited under the scheme since it was started some few years ago.
On his part, a senior communications and public relations officer at FCC, Frank Mdimi said that the organisation had partnered with TBS to provide facilitative consumer protection campaign and work on consumer complaints against unfair competition in the market.
He said the FCC was now undertaking reviews on all businesses to consumer contracts that are enforced at the expenses of the consumers.
“The law has given the FCC powers to intervene and see the legitimacy of such contracts and so far we have reviewed more than 180 of them mainly from the financial institutions where we have discovered many playing fouls to their customers,” he said.
Some regions that have benefited with the national wide joint campaign which was launched last month are Mwanza (Lake zone) Dar es Slaam (Coast zone), Mbeya (Southern Highland zone ) Dodoma (Central zone ), Arusha (Northern zone) and Mtwara (Southern zone).
Source: IPP Media