Sale of rice in some markets in Benin : Tricks to rob customers

The open scam continues. Despite our publication dating from 8 mars 2023, tricks to rob customers who come to pay for bags of rice in the Dantokpa markets, Gbogbanou and others have not stopped. Many Beninese are victims of this situation of big deception. 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 is 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, he develops sufficiently serious behaviors. 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 strategy developed is very simple : 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 gouge 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 the population on the pretext that they use them to make shopping bags or blankets... Others, on the other hand, take care of the detachment of rice bags. 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 unexpected descents, the solution

Faced with the high cost of living, it is inconceivable that this practice continues to fire in the markets of Benin. What requires unexpected descents 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. It is at this price alone that crooked traders will be able to be detected., story of pulling the wheat from the chaff. Although the importance of measurements being fundamental to all aspects of human activity, the Abmcq must be part of the new dynamic of measures. As it did at service stations. The agency also has modern equipment that can enable it to guarantee the reliability of regulated measuring instruments., ensure the metrological quality of storage tanks, depot and service station pumps, electricity and water meters, promote legal metrology and the quality of industrial products. The Minister of Trade, la Douane, consumer associations, the republican police,  health police officers, market officials must work together to expose these networks and bring them to court.

Etienne YEMADJE (Coll)