Foreign Goods pre-shipping Inspection...

Foreign Goods pre-shipping Inspection 

and the looming impact of ‘Industrial Abomination’

Sam Mwaka-karama

Ancient industrial cartoon junkyard animators, once upon a time, dreamt of the ultimate automated industrial abomination of all times - as the enormous Himalayan sort-of junk-heap manglement of worldly industrial complexity where massive Portland iron smelters - with thick smoke billowing from huge chimneys - characteristically smog the sprawl of urban cosmopolitans, busy city production and consumerism atmosphere; with industrious manufacturing-craft mania, iron mongery, crap-metallurgy and foundry, fabrications, design, finishing, packing and unto the world maritime shipping, road and rail transportations to the final consumer - would become such endless and still unending nightmare - where the 'iron men' would - by the very repetitiveness of their robotic 'dawn to dusk' and 'dusk to dawn' capitalist restlessness - become spider-webbed in this bizarre whirlwind 'megalomania' – the ultimate industrial abomination.

What the cartoon junkyard artist did not bother-with, was the 'off-springs' of these huge pulsating "Theta and Entheta" of this new-world fired-up by worldly consumerism, need and insatiable hunger, quest, fashion, competitiveness and famished want.

The off-springs of these 'iron men' and 'iron women' of the unending industrial revolutions, wars and growths - are the metaphorical ‘Gulliver’ inch-man 'gnomes' - who climb all over the tired sleepy Swartz… Western 'ironman of capitalism' of the modern day.

The invincible industrial Inch-men Gnomes roped an incredible network - in perpetual process of product output; replications, copycat-ism, jinx-craftsmanship, counterfeits, fake-ism and sub-standardization of all types of goods... like tiny colony-ants, they flood the world’s busiest ports with uncontrollable surge of millions upon millions of container tonnage... most noticeably always targeting Eastern African Countries [being conveniently just across the Indian Ocean] where currently governments are evidently overwhelmed! There is already a revolution in ship-building abroad; designers of cargo liners are phasing in new mammoth size ships; ports are threatened with impossible complex congestions; warehousemen are fighting for huge chunks of land for miles and miles of Go downs.

In Uganda, government is moved into [a not so clear state of] consumer protection. And protectionism is a new phenomenon - by and large on average a little less than ten years in practice in the EAC - the protection Schemas could appropriately be defined as embryo in East Africa…

Couple of years ago several Vehicles were tracked-down and impounded in Kampala and other parts of the East African Region - purportedly as having been stolen from Japan – today Monday, July 22^nd, 2013 one of Uganda’s leading daily has a funny front page; …something about ‘58 vehicles impounded by the Police’ – as having been ‘stolen from London’. At the Uganda Media Centre recently, I personally asked the Hon Minister Amelia Kyambadde about the [stolen Japan Cars impounding incident] – she quibbled; “that happened at a time we had temporarily suspended PVoC scheme for evaluation purposes”.   

"Pre-Export Verification of Conformity to Standards" – PVoC  

PVoC - founded under the ‘UNBS Act’ and regulated by the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Cooperatives collaborating with UNBS bureaucracy - had a number of false-starts and on and offs – including the time the “Ministry suspended this program in order to further review its status on 19th June 2013” as explained by Hon Amelia Kyambadde, Minister - in a Press briefing on resumption of the scheme recently – factor triggered by the vast need to get closer to the consumers via the press and [newly formed committee; UNBS, KACITA,UNCCI, MTIC, and PSFU] and generate ideas for defining PVoC functions - which seem to perennially hang in an unclear haze of conflicting desire to work in contract with foreign Inspection and Verification Companies or perhaps work independently [and on the home ground] as PVoC - in a manner likely to duplicate the foreign Inspectors work – somehow; though PVoC's mandate was clearly spelt-out in a six point program-objective lay-out (Ref: UNBS Press Release 1st June 2013). The real magnitude of the problem is beyond the political policy, administrative principles, UNBS guidelines or PVoC mandates… there is just simply an immoral and abominable state of industrial production emanating from some parts of the world!  

PVoC's problem however seems to emanate from simple fact that despite the presence of six International Inspection Agencies: for general goods [SGS – INTERTEK and Bureau Veritas] – while for used motor vehicle [JEVIC - JKAM - EAAS] – based in Japan and UAE and probably operating in most ports of origin in the major exporter countries doing business with Uganda; China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, India, Pakistan, Turkey, EU, Britain and many others – even then sub-standard products [apparently including stolen vehicles] still come openly into the Country...

Meaning that over the next five to ten years; the states of industrial productivity output abomination in the manufacturing and Exporting countries of the far East might go-up five fold – guessing from the new design cargo liners sizes set to be floated on the maritime shipping markets in the not so far away future.

Dramatic increase in the ‘Gulliver’ inch man ‘gnomes’ activities in the Far East over the past decade or so... progressively shift consumerism downwards towards the 'bottom of the pyramid' as it were; spurring the younger generation to work-harder for the sub-standard goods – aggressively sold to the unsuspecting eager and fast spending consumer… it is a haven for the ‘gnomes’... what if it went-up five fold in the next ten years?

Who is the culprit; between the manufacturer, exporter and importer of the fake substandard [& stolen?] goods?

While government seem to think that the culprit in this situation was the 'careless' Ugandan importer... who 'blindly' buys the fake [& stolen] or substandard [and fake] goods from abroad and so should be penalized and also charged to pay stiffly for the internal PVoC inspections system - on the contrary arguably - the Ugandan local importers [I don’t know about the foreigners] were just profit driven business people, keen on meeting their financial transfer obligations to have their consignments delivered on time.

If the foreign manufacturers and exporters were rooted in sub-standardization, even theft - to them, the local importers - those were highly technical policy-matters that should be debated and resolved between Uganda and the foreign countries’ business policy makers.

And if [for example] - the manufacturers’ [standardization] weren't regulated by their own governments - then Uganda officials and business leaders should go out there and table their disquiet... instead of penalizing the importers at home or duplicating the costly inspection process. Or even impounding goods already paid for in foreign exchange – and very much in advance – as having been stolen: Then how did the foreign Ports of discharge fail to verify the [stolen vehicle] particulars; [chassis number, engine number, plate numbers, insurance stickers for five years etcetera] – how will they [foreign ports of discharge] ever inspect anything over the next five to ten years; when finally the industrial abomination blows-up out of proportions with more than five times the tonnage currently passing through their ports; aren’t the foreign inspection and verification companies actually already overwhelmed?    

At best - PVoC should more appropriately become yet another expeditionary work-group [like those in Somalia - etcetera] – if need be to inspect and verify the goods before they were discharged from the port of export. Goods inspection and verifications are apparently becoming a nightmare – considering mushrooming industrial out-put abomination abroad; some manufacturing countries might even pay for local consumer ‘inspectors’ to be stationed abroad in their countries; so that goods get verified before shipping – even then, there is still a bizarre overwhelming factor... inspecting thousands of 12ft, 20ft, 40ft containers in detail everyday of the week, month; how do you even conceptualize such an operation plan? Who is actually the culprit in this Industrial Abomination?

The Author is an Independent Thinker, Writer and Blogger.

mwakarama@gmail.com