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Bottled water makers pay Rs 1.5m in fines
Fines amounting to Rs 1.5 million have been collected by the Consumer Affairs Authority (CAA) from bottled water manufacturers breaking the law over the past two years.
The CAA is calling on the public to provide information if suspect bottles of water are found in shops
The fines came from 345 raids carried out across the country.
Offences included misleading labelling – the absence or obliteration of a price tag and other product details – the sale of water for sums higher than the marked price and sales of outdated products.
More than 50 cases of misleading labelling were reported from September 1, 2016 to December last year.
Certain manufacturers had not displayed the price, batch number, manufacturing date, expiry date, weight and volume on bottled water while other products were found with defaced labels. Some bottles did not carry a brand label at all, the CAA found.
Last September, the authority issued an extraordinary gazette notification imposing a maximum retail price on bottled water.
However, raids carried out since the gazette came to effect exposed 198 cases of bottled water manufacturers found violating this decree.
The price controls were imposed following the exposure of secret deals between manufacturers and wholesalers to promote certain products.
Due to stiff competition in the market, manufacturers were selling water at very low prices to wholesalers in order to give retailers promoting their brand a huge profit margin, a CAA survey revealed. Selling for such low prices did not encourage manufacturers to supply good-quality bottled water, the authority said.
Product certification by the Sri Lanka Standards Institute was made mandatory from September 2016. To obtain certification, all PET bottled water manufacturers must adhere to an approved four-step filtration process.
Water obtained by manufacturers from sources such as tube wells, spring wells, dug wells and shallow wells has to be filtered using sand in order to remove larger dirt particles in it. A carbon filter is then introduced into the filtering process to remove odour.
The remaining minute particles are then excluded by a micron filter.
Finally, the water undergoes an ultraviolet process to exterminate micro-organisms.
The Ministry of Health forbids the bottling, packing and importing or distribution of mineral or drinking water if no registration certificate has been obtained from the ministry.
The certificate comes with a registration number that must be printed on the labels of the water bottles.
The CAA has discovered that two bottled water manufacturers (in Gampaha and Dambadeniya) have been displaying a fake registration number on their labels that did not match the list of registered brands of the ministry. These bottles were found to be on sale in Colombo.
The certificate has to be renewed every three years, and manufacturers complain that the ministry takes at least four months to test products and renew or issue permits, which costs them sales.
The CAA is calling on the public to provide information if suspect water bottles are found in shops. “The public can send us samples of water which are found to be unhygienic. The CAA would then take necessary measures to test the samples and determine whether they are fit for consumption,” CAA Director-General M.S.M. Fauzer said. He added that the standards on water bottles also apply to soft drink bottles.