KAMPALA – The Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) has on Wednesday, September 11, clarified about the alleged misleading reports on Kakira sugar that were published by one of the newspaper dailies.
According to a statement by the UNBS Head of Public Relations, Godwin Bonge Muhwezi, the report published on Wednesday, 11 September 2019 is inaccurate and misleading.
“The headline: “UNBS cleared expired sugar for sale” is damaging, blatantly deceptive and flies in the face of our mandate of protecting consumers against harmful and dangerous substandard products,” reads an excerpt from a UNBS statement.
He urged the public to disregard it and treat it with the contempt it deserves.
Mr Muhwezi said in a statement that,”We undeniably state that UNBS did not clear any expired sugar for sale. The sugar in question was cleared in 2015 for re-processing as a raw material in line with internationally accepted standards.”
“Laboratory analysis carried out before re-processing indicated that the sugar was free of heavy metals and that it did not contain any compounds that would pose a health risk to the consumer. Based on the results, re-processing was recommended with clear guidelines on how it would be carried out to safeguard the consumer,” he added.
Mr Muhwezi said UNBS supervised the process to ensure that the sugar was subjected to adequate quality assurance measures as per the requirements of the Standard (US EAS 749:2010) and therefore was safe for human consumption.
“After the sugar was re-processed, it was further tested for conformity to standards and it passed. Therefore, it is grossly inaccurate to say UNBS cleared expired sugar,” reads the statement in part.
