The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) as part of its regulatory mandate to protect public health and safety yesterday met with its stakeholders in Tema to discuss several measures put in place to ensure compliance at the various ports of entry.
The stakeholder meeting which was put together by the FDA’s Centre for Import and Export Control, (CIEC) aim to give a lot of insight into new guidelines to ensure that there is total compliance on products that are either imported or exported into the country.
Addressing the meeting, Mr. Emmanuel Yaw Kwareteng, Head of CIEC noted that sometime this year, his outfit declared “Zero Tolerance for unregistered imported products” policy which is to ensure that all FDA regulated products that come into the country are registered prior to clearance before they are cleared to go into trade.
He continue that currently 70% of all imported products are registered with the FDA leaving the 30% which represent goods that enter the country as ‘personal effect’, consolidated FDA regulated products and other devices.
He pointed out that after the successful implementation of the police, the FDA in recent times observed a rather worrying trend where products meant for commercial purposes are cleared at the ports under the guise of ‘personal effects’. He further pointed out that the FDA has observed that some of these products that come in as ‘personal effects’ end up in trade, which is in contravention to the Public Health Act, Act 851 as far as imported products are concerned.
Explaining further how some of these products end up on various markets in the country, Mr. Kwarteng mentioned that Freight Consolidators commonly known as “door-to-door” operators who by practice, aggregate regulated products from individuals into a single container have been found to be engaging in the activity of clearing unregistered products in drums and other receptacles also under the guise of ‘personal effects’ for sale across the country.
He told the meeting that the registration of products is to ensure the safety, quality and efficacy of the product for use and as such these practices of evading the registration process put the public at risk as far as public health and safety is concerned.
According to him to further augment the enforcement of the ‘Zero tolerance’ for unregistered imported products on the Ghanaian market, the FDA together with other relevant institutions have established a set of guidelines to help streamline the importation of ‘personal effects’ into the country.
The guidelines, he stated, seek to spell out the volume and quantity of products that will qualify as ‘personal effects’ before entry into the various ports.
Concluding, he commented that the stakeholder meeting was to engage participants on the way forward with the FDA’s implementation of the new guidelines to ensure the protection of public health and safety.
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