Hosiery manufacturers now can expect to get relief from the harassments they have been facing at the hands of authorities for two decades even for the minor inadvertent mistakes made on the packets when products were sold as ‘packaged commodities’ at retail level. Following repeated representations of the hosiery manufacturers, the Director of Legal Metrology in the Centre has now issued fresh directions on the issue.
The new directive issued to Controllers of Legal Metrology in States had asked them to make the field level officers understand the differences in circumstances when certain goods were packaged in bunch like in the case of hosiery products and then sold piece-wise at retail level vis-à-vis the general packaged goods like edible items which cannot be opened, and act accordingly when imposing penalties.
“We see this as a big interim relief at a time when we have been asking for an ordinance to totally exempt hosiery products from the Packaged Commodities Rules 2011 itself to avoid misinterpretations”, South India Hosiery Manufacturers Association joint secretary R. Damodaran told The Hindu.
Since the products been classified under the packaged commodities rules, the authorities have been penalising the manufacturers even when vendor to whom the products were sold in bulk packets subsequently sells it piece-wise.
“Our point always has been the hosiery products are never bought by customers in the bulk. Consumers usually prefer one or two inner garments from the main packet that contains large number of pieces packed together for convenience in handling. Hence, it should be treated as pre-packaged commodity not as a packed item”, pointed out the manufacturers.
Another harassment faced was due to the mandating of displaying the number of pieces inside, maximum retail price per piece and name of manufacturer outside every ‘bulk packet’.
“Due to this authorities harass the manufacturer even for any accidental erasing of some letters from words like ‘tax’ or ‘price’ any other inadvertent/trivial mistakes when the products been kept for longer duration at retail outlets”, said Mr. Damodaran.
