TRADE: Nakumatt Rwanda suspends harmful products

Nakumatt Rwanda, a local subsidiary of the leading regional Nairobi based supermarket chain, has removed Nestle’s baby formula lactogen and NIDO powdered milk products from the shelves, following a directive from Nairobi. “On Tuesday, within minutes, we were informed by our Kenyan counterparts and we immediately removed them from the shelves. Popular baby foods lactogen and NIDO have been banned in Kenya. If anything is endangering our customers, we quickly act on it,” said Joseph Ndungu Nakumatt’s Country Manager in Rwanda. “We won’t put them back on the shelves until we get feed back from our bosses in Kenya,” he added. Most of Nakumatt’s products are imported from Kenya. This came after a report was published in The Daily Nation, a Kenyan daily news publication that inspections done in South Africa cited suspected levels of melamine contamination which could turn out to be harmful to consumers. The local Kenyan paper reported that in South Africa after finding out about the contamination a batch of the products was recalled. But Nestle a subsidiary of the South African company was quoted as denying its affiliation and said that they were importing powdered milk from Holland. In Rwanda, Simba Super market’s Justine Ngarambe, the Managing Director, said that, “We get our powdered milk from Holland. We don’t even shop from Kenya.” However, on Wednesday, Rwanda Bureau of Standards (RBS) officials said they were not informed about the alleged poisonous commodity. “We only knew about the contaminated products from China but not of South Africa. I am going to call Kenya and South African Bureau of standard and confirm,” said Patrice Ntiyamira, the Head of Metrology at RBS. Ends

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TRADE: Nakumatt Rwanda suspends harmful products