Phan Oun, director of the Consumer Protection and Fraud Repression Department (CCF) in a meeting on Tuesday. CCF
The Ministry of Commerce’s General Directorate of Consumer Protection, Competition and Fraud Repression (CCF) has instructed its officials throughout the country to disseminate standard operating procedures (SOPs) for markets, especially rules regarding foods imported from abroad that may pose a risk to public health.
On May 17, CCF director-general Phan Oun chaired a virtual meeting to discuss capacity building for law enforcement officers and the continuation of efforts to educate consumers and businesses about laws related to commerce.
“In the meeting, we instructed CCF officials about SOPs to check goods in markets and SOPs to control imports from abroad such as vegetables, fish, meat and other groceries which pose a high risk to the public,” he said.
According to Oun, CCF officials will engage in regular surveillance and use that intelligence to identify goods that pose a risk and find out the source of these imports and then take further action by requesting cooperation from the General Department of Customs and Excise.
“We have prepared [posters] on four key programmes: food safety, consumer protection, marketplace competition and Halal food for consumers and businesses to learn about,” he said.
He added that these posters are designed with a short summary of the topic that is easy to see and understand on topics like safe food choices or alcohol poisoning.
He said they also published leaflets on the topic of illegal practices in business related to fuel for the owners of gas stations and fuel depots throughout the country so that they better understood the law and what the penalties were for breaking it.
Oun said CCF also introduced SOPs to control petroleum products and iodised salt.
CCF has prepared training courses on the procedures for officials from CCF branches via video conferencing in the near future.
“There are law enforcement officials and those who are authorised to act as judicial police officials, so the CCF leadership gives serious consideration to the strengthening of their capacity,” he said.
