Pakistan Standard and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA), the only national body for assuring quality, is persistently issuing reports regarding the quality of essential products without laboratory tests, Business Recorder learnt on good authority on Thursday. Sources said that although the lab facilities were shifted to Gulistan-e-Johar, PSQCA head office in Karachi continues issuing "test reports" to various firms without bothering to ascertain the quality of their products.
According to sources, the required machinery had not yet been fixed in PSQCA's Gulistan-e-Johar office. In a letter sent to top PSQCA officials recently, senior officials at the authority's Quality Control Centre expressed serious concerns and said that reports were being issued by officials at PSQCA's Head Office at Pakistan Secretariat, Block 77, "without lab tests".
Interestingly, despite the complaint by its own officers, some influential elements at PSQCA head office were continuing with this illegal practice and sources said that these elements were getting kickbacks. The sources said that after the emergence of this practice, the authority had practically confined the testing process on paper, and these unscrupulous elements were giving a free hand to firms producing substandard products.
The authority is responsible to ensure quality and standard of at least 75 selected 'Mandatory Products', including 40 food items such as apple juice, balanced feed mixture for live stock, vanaspati ghee, biscuits (excluding wafer biscuits), butter, carbonated beverages, bottled drinking water, cooking oils (blended), cotton-seed oil cake (expeller type), chilly powder, concentrated fruit juices, condensed milk, curry powder, edible sesame seed oil, food for infants and children, flavoured milk, fruit squashes, honey, iodised salt, jams (fruit preserves) & jellies, margarine, mayonnaise, marmalade, milk powder (whole and skimmed), natural mineral water, orange juice, palm oil (edible grade for cooking purposes), pickles, poultry feeds, refined coconut oil, refined cotton seed oil, refined maize corn oil, refined mustard oil, refined soy bean oil, refined sunflower oil, refined sugar and white sugar, synthetic vinegar, tea (black), turmeric (ground & powdered) and wafers biscuits.
However, PSQCA failed to check manufacturing and marketing of cooking oils, bottled waters, aerated beverages, biscuits and other products, which are on its essential products' list. These products, according to PSQCA rules, have to be registered and carry the authority's quality mark and registration number on the package. At the same time, PSQCA is supposed to check manufacturing facilities and the quality of products before issuing a license to manufacture and market them.
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