Persona, Farzana Shakil’s fined Tk 3.6m for using illegal, counterfeit, expired products

Top makeover salons Persona and Farzana Shakil’s have been fined Tk 3.6 million for using illegal, counterfeit and out of date products on their unsuspecting customers in Dhaka.

The Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection or DNCRP fined two outlets of Persona at Dhanmondi Tk 600,000 during a drive on Thursday.

A mobile court of the Rapid Action Battalion or RAB fined their two outlets in Gulshan Tk 1.5 million each.

“People buy services of Persona because they trust it. So it must respect this trust,” DNCRP Deputy Director Monjur Mohammad Shahriar told bdnews24.com after the drive.   

A huge amount of beauty and cosmetic products without any information on import or the place of production were found at Personal Beauty Parlour and Persona Adams on Road No 27 at Dhanmondi, Monjur said.

“There is no accountability for these products, which are either illegally brought or counterfeit. We found no information about tax or VAT on these products. They could not prove that these are not counterfeit or adulterated,” he said.

No Persona official was available immediately for comment, but Monjur said it promised to “correct the mistakes”.

“They confessed that they were 50 percent right, but still need to correct the rest 50 percent,” the DNCRP deputy director said.

The directorate also fined Alvira’s Beauty Care in the area Tk 300,000 for the same reason – using products without label on import.

Its manager claimed most of the products at their outlet had import information on them while they were yet to add the information to “some” of the products.

DNCRP assistant directors Abdul Jabbar Mondol and Afruza Rahman Runa were in the team that carried out the drive.

In Gulshan, Executive Magistrate Sarwoer Alam led the RAB mobile court drive.

Besides products without import information, Persona and Farzana Shakil’s two outlets in the area were using expired cosmetics products, Sarwoer told bdnews24.com  

“A huge of amount of out of date cosmetics were found in the drive. We immediately collected Tk 1.5 million in fines from each of the two organisations in cash,” he said.

DNCRP on Wednesday temporarily shut down the Bashundhara City outlet of BD Budget Beauty, a cosmetics and beauty products retailer, for the same reason.

“We have been asking all the business entities to use stickers with import information because it’s impossible for a consumer to know whether a product is legally imported or adulterated in Jinjira or Chawkbazar," Monjur clarified after Wednesday’s drive.