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Asif Iqbal
Doha
Despite the Ministry of Economy and Commerce's (MEC) decree obligating major retail outlets to declare the unit price of goods on sale, many shops are openly flouting the directive.
A survey by this newspaper found that many shops in Barwa Village are not following the MEC initiative on the pretext that they are not aware of the requirement.
Most of them offered the excuse that they haven't received any official intimation from the MEC, while some said they did not have enough manpower to tag all the items in the shop.
Surinder Kumar, a salesman at a shop, said,"Given the amount of items we have, it is impossible to price-tag all the items. Moreover we don't have enough staff to do the job."
He said that during the day they are extremely busy serving customers and hardly have time to attach tags to the many items they have in the store.
The situation, however, is different at big department stores."We always adhere to all MEC directives as we are a responsible brand. We take all efforts to implement any decree issued by the MEC," said Rupesh Indranil of E-Max electronics.
According to Rupesh, E-max electronics strictly follows MEC guidelines. He said every item is tagged for the convenience of customers and whenever there is a sales promotion campaign, they always put tags on the items with old and current prices written clearly.
It may be recalled that early this year, the MEC had issued a decree requiring retail outlets to review the form and content of price tags to include unit prices in addition to the selling price, name of the product and size.
The MEC initiative was part of its efforts to boost competition in the market and to protect the consumers'right to compare the prices of products of different weights and sizes.
Bert Noel, a customer who regularly buys hardware items told Qatar Tribune that items on sale in most of the shops he visits in Barwa Village don't have price tags and to know the price of a particular item he has to ask the salesman. He said sometimes he finds the same item carrying different price in different shops."Often you feel cheated," he said.
The new decision of the MEC however, exempts merchants and retail outlets from declaring unit prices in some cases on the grounds that no benefit would accrue from comparing items if they are packed and offered for sale by considering the original unit of measurement as a basis for comparison.
