The Consumer Council has received numerous complaints regarding the quality of personal protective equipment produced and sold by some businesses.

Chief Executive, Seema Shandil, says these include face masks, hand sanitizers, gloves and disinfectants.

Shandil says they conducted a recent survey where they also found huge disparities in the prices of these items.

“We saw that one pharmacy was retailing a pack of 50 disposable masks for $75. While the other was retailing the same thing for $147.50. There was a similar scenario for the hand sanitizer as well. One consumer sent a photo whereby the same sanitizer which costs around $20 in Nausori was around $40 in Suva.”

In his announcement yesterday, Permanent Secretary for Health Dr James Fong says some businesses are trying to remain essential by producing these PPE’s

“We got hardware shops producing masks, where did they get the machine from? Now we got manufacturers producing hand sanitizers – where did that come from? You see where I am getting at. This is the problem when we try to make everything mandatory and everybody says you have to write it in the law”.

The Consumer Council of Fiji says it is appalled to note that some pharmacies are making as much as 100 per cent profit from mask sales with no consideration of the severity of the virus and its impacts on Fijians.