Health Hazard From Poor-Quality Imports

Herat has traditionally been a thriving commercial centre sitting on the trade route between Iran and Afghanistan, but with so many goods coming into the country there are few safety standards to protect consumers from substandard products.



Health officials in this western city acknowledge there are problems with products as chocolate, tea, sugar, crisps and biscuits, which can result in food poisoning, especially in children.



“In the last month alone we’ve had at least 15 cases of food poisoning in children caused by crisps and biscuits,” said Dr Mohammad Karim Nemati, the head of environmental health in the region.



“My two children almost died after eating biscuits,” said Mahbuba, 35. The biscuits, she said, came from Iran, and after eating them her children spent two weeks in hospital, where they were treated for food poisoning.



“Why do officials let businessmen import fake products? How are we supposed to tell which are good and which are bad?” she asked angrily.



When such cases are recorded, health officials say they identify the foodstuffs and then confiscate them from local shops.



Dr Abdul Hakim Tamanna, deputy director of Herat’s health department, said laboratories to test food quality would soon be built.



Apart from foodstuffs, imported medicines are another high-risk product, with significant amounts of expired, substandard and even counterfeit pharmaceuticals finding their way onto the Afghan market. In Herat, such medicines are believed to have caused illness and some fatalities, although doctors cannot always identify the principal cause of death.



Tamanna said samples of medicines were sent to Kabul for testing, as there were no local facilities. “Sometimes the sample does not represent the entire batch of medicine, and this can create problems,” he added.



According to Mir Muslim Seddiqi, the head of customs in Herat, his officers have seized enough expired medicines, soft drinks, sweets and other foodstuffs to fill three freight containers in just one three-month period.



The Iranian consulate in Herat rejects claims that Iran is to blame for the substandard goods on the Afghan market.



“It is Afghan businessmen who are the real culprits,” said Farhad, head of the consulate’s commercial activities. “All the goods [officially] exported from Iran are of high quality - otherwise we would lose consumer confidence.”



Farhad conceded that substandard goods might be being produced in Iran in response to Afghan demand for low-cost products, but he insisted the only way they could cross the frontier was by smuggling, because Iranian border officials would stop anything that did not conform to the country’s export regulations.



“Of course things can be imported illegally,” he said.



Herat customs chief Seddiqi told IWPR that Afghanistan imposes high import tariffs on items that it can produce itself, in a bid to slow the influx of such products and protect domestic businesses.



One adverse effect of this protectionism might be to encourage the kind of smuggling Farhad mentioned, resulting in cheap, unregulated goods that undercut their Afghan counterparts.



Noor Ahmad, director of a Herat-based soft drinks firm, complained that cut-price imports have cost him business. “We cannot compete with Iranian companies because traders import their low-quality drinks, thus driving down market prices. Our products are better quality, but people want cheaper things,” he said.



Herat’s strategic location makes it a key overland route to Iran and the Gulf, and it is also close to the border with Turkmenistan to the north.



Customs chief Seddiqi reported that trade through Herat was up 13 per cent in the first six months of the year compared with the same period in 2005, and customs revenues rose by about the same proportion, from 94 million US dollars betweeen January and June last year to 105 million this year.



Sadeq Behnam and Sudabah Afzali are freelance reporters in Heart.