Consumer Council of Fiji Chief Executive, Seema Shandil says they received 333 complaints with a monetary value of $655,000 since 1st December to date.

Shandil says the complaints ranged from retail of poor quality products, to wilted fresh produce, and sale of expired items.

She says they beefed up their operations during the festive season and conducted approximately 300 market surveillances.

“This is food items we are talking about, foreign materials found in food products and other issues related to food and drink products.” 

Shandil says they found that retailers were hiking prices of in demand food items during the festive period.

“So we saw that, as I said, there’s demand for certain products like cakes, canned fruits and things like that. And the prices of such products were quite high initially and then we saw the prices declining a bit, but the quality was not good.”

The Consumer Watchdog Chief says they are also concerned that retailers continue to sell expired food items during busy periods to dupe the unsuspecting consumers.