By George Bukenya
In an effort to improve product standards, Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) move to introduce digital monitoring mechanism where the consumer/user of the product will be scanning the genuine Q-mark put on the product using his or her phone to detect whether it was certified.
The digital conformity according UNBS Executive Director Eng. James Kasigwa, will help to eliminate loopholes that have been letting substandard products to be brought to market.
While addressing Journalist at Uganda Media Centre in Kampala, Eng. Kasigwa said that some SMS companies have been over time using Q marks for other companies producing similar products while others would forge UNBS Q-mark to indicate that their products is certified.
Although many micro scale factories have been closed by UNBS in the past, Kasigwa said that the standards monitoring and enforcing agency has shifted from only policing to using value preposition methods were they train the managers and proprietors of the SMS factories to equip them with the necessary skills required to produce standardized products.
“ We have moved away from enforcing product standards requirements to Value Preposition and using these criteria we train the producers to encourage them meet standards we require,’’ Eng. Kasigwa stated.
He further revealed that this method has helped to grow producers from being micro and small scale to medium and large scale producers, and statistics gathered indicate before adopting there were only 200 medium scale now the number has shoot up to over 1000.
“ Our mandate is to ensure that the product produced and sold meet quality, safety and environmental requirements as well as competitiveness especially for the locally produced products.’’ He said.
He also said that people have lodged complaints on weighing scales being used especially in many busy trading centers and products which don’t weigh the quantity put on the containers or packages that UNBS will soon carry out an operation after proper intelligence led investigations to crack down on this cheating of public.
In the recent past Uganda’s grain products where referred back home for containing affrotoxin specifically those that were exported to South Sudan and Kenya but the UNBS boss attributed this to the post-harvest handling.
In June 2023 South Sudan standards monitoring authorities seized 47 trucks out of the 1247 loaded with maize grains after allegedly founding them containing grains which had affrotoxin in them but on arrival in the country Ugandan authorities worked together with their counter parts from Sudan and after examining the grains from all the referred trucks only 24 were found to have the problem.
Meanwhile the International World Standards Day was commemorated yesterday 14th October, 2024 but the Minister of Trade, Industries and Cooperatives Francis Mwebesa informed reporters that Uganda is honoring and celebrating that day today.