South Asian Business news and information

Say, you just bought a popular brand perfume paying a good amount of money After one or two days, you notice a sticker on the perfume. Removing it, you find that the perfume is not actually a brand perfume rather a fake one produced in local factory. Your initial reaction is easily understood. I do not know whether the citizens in western countries face these kinds of problems but in many developing countries like those of South Asia, this is a very common thing. Recently, the government of West Bengal, India, has started an operation on the popular shopping malls of the city to find out whether they were selling fake goods. I am quoting from the report published in Khaleej Times:

The West Bengal government has come down hard on malls and marts selling spurious products in Kolkata and elsewhere in the Left Front-ruled state.

Low-priced spurious products flying off the shelves in newly-opened air conditioned malls range from chocolates and perfumes to clothes and accessories.

“We have conducted raids at some malls in Kolkata and in district towns after receiving complaints from consumers. We will conduct more raids, as we have found truth in these complaints”, said K. Sathiavasan, Secretary, Consumer Affairs Department. He said that the department has conducted 27 raids since early November. A wide range of consumer products have been seized for violating the Consumer Protection Act, 1986.

The report says that some of the most popular malls of Kolkata is now under the government monitoring.

The worst thing about buying fake goods is that in most of the cases the buyer never gets back his money. The West Bengal government has taken a very good step. These kinds of fake goods are not only harmful to people but also ruins a shops image. I hope the shop owners of West Bengal who sale fake goods learn a good lesson from this.

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Khaleej Times