No fewer than 23 electrical companies operating in Nigeria have reportedly failed the compliance and laboratory test of the Standards Organization of Nigeria, (SON).
The Head of Ekiti State office of the agency, Mrs Serah Idowu announced at the weekend in a statement in Ado-Ekiti that the affected companies were involved mostly in the production of electrical items such as bulbs, plugs, wire and cables.
She said findings had shown that many items manufactured by the affected companies had flooded most of the nation’s markets and outlets.
She explained that SON decided to expose status and activities of the erring manufacturers so as to curtail possible fire outbreaks in homes and offices which the fake and sub-standard products they were making may cause.
She said the alarm had also become necessary in view of the threats such cable posed to lives and property of Nigerians through avoidable fire outbreaks.
According to her, out of a total of 24 companies whose electrical products were tested and examined by the Laboratory and Compliance Unit of the agency in Ekiti State, only one of them scaled through.
She threatened to make public, list of the erring 23 companies if they failed to withdraw all their electrical items from the market and stop further production of such substandard products.
The SON boss disclosed that a meeting had already been summoned with those behind the companies and their distributors where they hope to receive the last warning, as well as obtain undertakings from them not to further put the lives of people at risk.
She warned that after the meeting, products of recalcitrant ones would be confiscated by the agency wherever they were found, while their owners would be made to pay a minimum of N1million as cost of destruction to the Treasury Single Account (TSA) Compliance Account of the agency.
She disclosed that SON was currently working out modalities that would make the distribution of certain category of industrial and household appliances such as gas cylinders and fire extinguishers, the exclusive preserve of the various state Fire Services.
Idowu lamented that most of the outlets where such high-tension electrical items were sold did not have the required safety precautions, while many of those that traded in them did not have any formal training in safety matters like those who work in Fire Services.
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