Dantokpa and Gbogbanou rice sales market : The open scam

Malice to rob customers who come to pay for bags of rice in the markets of Dantokpa and Gbogbanou. Many Beninese are victims of this situation of big deception which continues to exist. In these markets, low quality rice is loaded into high quality rice bags to be sold at a higher price.

Where are the competent services for verifying the quality and quantity of products sold on Beninese markets?, especially the Dantokpa and Gbogbanou markets ?  What's happening in these markets is embracing and disturbing.. Schemes are used by rogue traders to defraud customers. In the old days, the controllers of the Benin Metrology and Quality Control Agency (ABMCQ) regularly made unexpected raids on the markets, in shops and stores to pin down crooked traders. Their goods were seized. If other sanctions have been taken against them, today's resurgence of bad faith, the deceit and trickery in these markets amply show that we must go beyond.

 On the shelves, under the sheds, in shops and stores, serious enough behaviors are happening. Indeed, the bags of rice that are sold do not meet the standards. If the qualities are not what they should be, then it is the quantity that is reduced. In a bag of rice 50 Kg, at the weigh-in, we can read 45 at 40 Kg, is 5 at 10 Kg less. Another developed and very simple strategy, in bags of rice emptied of their contents and which are of superior quality, we find rice of small qualities. But the price charged is the same, i.e. the price of premium rice.

Networks specialized in these maneuvers are present in these markets. They chew up customers without worry. It is a chain work that is done. In these networks, there are individuals who specialize in buying empty rice bags from people on the pretext that they use them to make shopping bags or blankets…Others, on the other hand, take care of the detachments of the bags of rice. There's a part that's in charge of change. The lower quality rice is loaded into the bag of the higher quality rice. The semi-wholesalers buy them and in turn resell them on the market at the price of high quality rice.. These bags of rice are carefully sewn and sold for exorbitant prices on the market. In a bag of fragrant rice, traders mix fragrant rice and unscented rice and sell the bag at the price of fragrant rice. Without knowing the quality of the rice that is in these bags, customers buy them at the price of high quality rice while there is lower quality rice. In the preparation, one part is cooked faster than the other. Or it's downright a paste found in pans. It is a disguised flight organized in Dantokpa and Gbogbanou.

The Minister of Trade, l’ABMCQ, la Douane, consumer associations, Republican Police,  health police officers, market officials must work together to expose these networks and bring them to court. Unexpected raids must be multiplied in these markets,  shops and sheds in which sacks of rice are sold for investigations into this phenomenon which is taking on a worrying aspect.

Etienne YEMADJE (Coll)