The Ghana Standard Authority (GSA) says it has prioritised three sectors for regulation and standardisation for the next two years.
The sectors according to the authority included; manufacturers of all items used in building and construction such as cements, iron rods and electrical cables, as well as those producing or selling all engineering products.
Speaking to the Ghanaian Times, in Accra on Monday, the Chief Executive Officer of the GSA, Professor Alex Dodoo, said the new act, Act 1078 which was passed in 2022 mandated the GSA to regulate everything except those with a specific regulator.
However, he said the areas and items were many and dealing with all would be problematic so the need to prioritise the three and subsequently upscale.
Prof. Dodoo said regulations and standardisation were not only key to the consumer alone but also the manufacturer since that was the only way by which their products could compete globally.
“There is a balance between consumer protection and facilitating genuine trade but we are keen on one thing; protecting consumers includes protecting their pockets and for us protecting their pockets means ensuring that they don’t use their monies to buy bad products,” he emphasised.
Prof. Dodoo said there seemed to be a deliberate ploy by some manufacturers and importers to either produce or import products that do not function into the country.
“Since March, the GSA, led by the enforcement team have been looking at products circulating in our markets and what was worrying is not just the proportion of products that were not meeting our standards but in relation to particularly electrical products, we noticed that some of the failures in terms of the substandard nature, were products which were deliberately designed not to work,” he said.
He said where there was manufacturing defect, it was easily noticed because it may not satisfy one form of standard or the other but where the defects were more than six thousand times of what it had to be, then it is someone who is deliberately manufacturing dangerous goods with full knowledge and full intent for either money or other purposes or both.
Prof. Dodoo said this was quiet worrying because such activities could be used to finance criminality in other areas.
He said most of these products which were mostly electrical products were not certified by the GSA, stressing that “Previously, they will import the items from one country and brand it as being from another country but now they manufacture it here and yet bear the signature of imported.
He explained that standards included all the necessary materials used for building and construction in the country.
BY CLIFF EKUFUL