Price council starts checking Christmas lights in Oro stores

By JIGGER J. JERUSALEM
Correspondent

A TEAM from the City Price Coordinating Council (CPCC) has begun inspecting Christmas lights being sold in the market to see if these have passed the government standards and are safe for use by the public ahead of the Yuletide season.

Lawyer Jose Edgardo Uy, head of the CPCC, said the inspection team is doing the rounds in several stores selling Christmas lights to determine if these products have complied with the regulations set by government agencies such as the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

CPCC and DTI have partnered in the conduct of random and unannounced inspections on stores selling series lights and other Christmas products in the city.

But, Uy said, those who were found to be non-compliant with the quality standards are still given due process before the DTI could penalize store owners and have their products be confiscated.

Although the CPCC and DTI are jointly conducting the inspection, CPCC’s role is just to assist the latter.

“First, we give them (store owners) time to explain why their products have not complied with government standards. If they fail to do so, then that’s the time that we confiscate their products,” he said.

After the confiscation, the DTI will then set the time for the destruction of the seized items.

“The destruction is to ensure that those items will never be sold again as these will pose danger to our consumers,” Uy said, adding that non-compliant products are usually the ones who can cause fires in homes.

Uy said  CPCC and DTI hope that retailers will no longer sell substandard products, as he noted that non-complying stores have dwindled in the past few years.

He said that back in 2014 when the CPCC was created, the government confiscated so much substandard Christmas lights that they have to use a road roller to destroy them.

“Now we only use scissors to destroy non-compliant Christmas lights, but we are hoping for the time that we no longer have to make confiscations,” he added.

Uy said store owners must follow government regulations as they are at the losing end if they fail to comply since they will lose a chunk of their inventory, aside from paying the penalty and being black-listed by the DTI.

The penalty, he said, is based on the capitalization of the store in that bigger establishments will have to pay a higher amount. The maximum fine set by the DTI is P5 million, he added.