Sanitiser, face masks, FCCPC

 

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JUMIA Nigeria said it has delisted 390 products belonging to 168 sellers of hand sanitisers and face masks from its platform.

This according to the company, is coming against the backdrop of warning issued by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, FCCPC to sellers engaged in price gouging and arbitrary increases in prices of protective & hygiene products in the wake of the recent outbreak of Coronavirus.

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This warning was contained in a letter received by the Chief Executive Officer, FCCPC, Babatunde Irukera, from the Chairwoman, Nigeria & Head of Institutional Affairs, Jumia Group, Juliet Anammah, at the weekend.

According to the letter, “Let me reconfirm that at Jumia we want to work with your agency, most especially at a critical time like this.

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“390 products belonging to 168 sellers for sanitisers and face masks have been delisted. Unfortunately, this is an ongoing process as sellers can relist products. Thus, we will be doing hourly checks and clean up if necessary.

“We are manually selecting now only Stock-Keeping Units, SKUs, with the best prices to be listed.”

On seller notification, the company noted that a further communication has been sent to all sellers to notify them that we will delist all SKUs with prices seen to be taking advantage of the situation

“We also asked the sellers with items delisted to review the prices if they would like to be relisted,” it stated.

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The letter further reads: “We have identified a seller that we can source from directly – this will ensure that we relist some of the essential items at better prices.

“We have also partnered with Reckitt Benckiser across Africa (manufacturer of sanitisers) to reduce the prices of their products on our site while we take 0% commission on all their sanitisers sold on our site.

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“Additionally, since we have millions of consumers on our site and some are searching for “coronavirus” on our site, we can collaborate with you (FCCPC) by ensuring the first result they find when they search for coronavirus is a URL leading to a message from either FCCPC or the Minister of Health.  Let me know and we can set it up.

“This is the second time JUMIA is responding to FCCPC’s warning in the last one week. The management of the online market had earlier written to bring to the attention of its vendors a release by the FCCPC.

“It has been observed that some sellers may have engaged in the arbitrary increase of prices on protective and hygienic products such as face masks, hand sanitisers etc. on account of the Coronavirus with a view of taking advantage of consumers.

“Please note that sellers who are found engaging in this unwholesome practice will find themselves subject to investigations and penalties by the FCCPC”, it cautioned.

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