Enforce tighter regulations to kick out illicit drinks

The Government has rightfully come out strongly to quash the manufacture and sale of illegal drinks in Kenya.

The vetting anew of all alcoholic beverage manufacturers is an exercise that will provide the regulators with a list of all approved alcoholic beverage producers, enabling them to eliminate those who are not compliant with regulatory standards.

While this is an important profiling exercise that has assisted the National Authority for the Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse (NACADA) in identifying all alcoholic drinks that are fit for consumption, it is crucial that the national and county governments remain firm in sealing all loopholes that could enable the return of the illicit drinks to the market.

In addition to closing down all illegal depots and distributors, enforcing stiff industry regulatory measures that will provide the public with a quality assurance measure is paramount.

Regulations that I believe the Government can look into include convening a task force comprising all agencies involved in the regulation of alcoholic beverages.

This task force would include NACADA, Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), Anti-Counterfeit Agency (ACA), Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS), Weights and Measures and Ministry of Public Health and would, in addition to vetting manufacturers, jointly conduct physical inspection of all their production facilities and related business facilities.

To ensure that the vetting exercise delivers its intended outcome, it is essential that it be centrally managed and controlled by the national government to ensure consistency both in the application of the vetting criteria and interpretation of the findings from all manufacturers vetted and inspected.

Opening up the process to decentralised management could contaminate it with ambiguity, which will ultimately defeat the objective of the process.

This concern is substantiated by the fact that we see varied alcohol regulations being developed at the county level, each intended to address the unique social situation of each county.

While this is driven by the noblest of motives, such variety of application and interpretation, if applied to the vetting process, could result in inconsistent standards of manufacturer compliance in different counties.

While the vetting brings alcoholic beverage manufacturers under scrutiny, a mechanism is needed to ensure that importers of finished alcoholic drinks are held to an equally rigorous standard for the protection of the consumer.

Similarly, importers of raw materials that are inputs to the production of alcoholic beverages must be included in the vetting and inspection process in order to eliminate any and all risk of contamination along the value chain of alcoholic drinks production.

I also believe that ensuring all manufacturers have quality assurance departments and submit regular reports on their testing methods and results will go a long way in ensuring the quality of all alcohol products remains up to standard.

This can be supported by a requirement that all manufacturers have a method of tracing their products in the market, by production line, date and time.

This will ensure that in the event that consumers are exposed to any risk due to contamination of a particular batch, both the government and the manufacturer can rapidly mobilise resources to identify and remove all affected products from the market.

Finally, all enforcement initiatives must be supported by regulatory agencies, in a unified approach.

As legally compliant manufacturers, we have a responsibility to work hand-in-hand with the government to ensure that we fulfil our part in all enforcement initiatives.

I believe that enforcement is critical; if the regulatory bodies do not apply a strict and uniform enforcement approach, then we end up with tragedies such as the recent spate of preventable deaths.