Fee-fi-fo-fum – I smell the brine of an Englishman

(First appeared in New Era 25 February 2015)

THE column heading is taken from the classic fairy tale, Jack and the Beanstalk. The correct saying is: Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman, Be he live, or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.

In our house, it has become common for us to check the ingredients of the packaged foods we purchase. This is especially important as our baby is breastfeeding and certain foods could cause him an irritation or worse. Believe me, when I say that my wife and I are looking forward to the three-month period when she can once again eat sushi and other “forbidden” foods. The most common forbidden products have been rare or undercooked meats including fish, meat and chicken. The past week, I received a video of slaughtered and de-feathered whole chickens being injected with a solution before freezing and felt I had to investigate further.

I posted the link onto the Namibia Consumer Protection Group on Facebook to get some comments from other consumers. This is the information I received from two contributors:

“It is called brine injection, and it is used mainly on frozen products like fish and chicken and not only to add mass and volume but to extend/improve shelf life as well but this is too extreme as there are certain limitations on how much brine is allowed in a certain product. That chicken is ballooning. The same is done here with our own chickens at NPI but not sure how much percentage is brine!”

“The brining process is done by injecting via multiple needles a brine solution (mild salt solution) of anything between 20 and 25 percent of the actual weight of the chicken before freezing it extremely quickly to prevent this water or brine from escaping the meat. For this, you pay the same price as for the chicken and they then get rich of the weight of the brine solution only because it is of absolute minimal cost… All frozen chicken suppliers do this, even here in Namibia.. It is a rip off for which the consumer must pay!”

I called the telephone number of Namibian Poultry Industries (NPI) and was put through to the Quality Assurance Department. The woman who answered, spoke in Afrikaans and then became very rude when I asked more information about the “brine or water” and the percentage injected in their chickens. She informed me that I was misinformed as it was not brine water, and I should look on their packaging for this information. I explained that my Afrikaans was not that good, but that I was inquiring on whether brine and / or water were injected and what these percentages were. She then put the telephone down and I could hear conversations in the background. After about five minutes the telephone was put down in my ear. Talk about customer service?

My question, in relation to what we as a family are eating, and indirectly what my child is ingesting through breast milk, did not seem to be that much to ask. Obviously, more investigation was needed.

So what is brine? Brine is water strongly impregnated with salt and it can also refer to soaking or preserving in salty water. Soaking your meats (such as lean meat, chicken and turkey) makes the meat juicier and more flavourful.

No customer can complain that ensuring the chicken is juicier and more flavourful is in the benefit of the customer, but is that what the customer is expecting when they purchase the chicken. Surely, with the high prices we pay for chicken we should expect that we are buying chicken and not something that adds flavour – and more importantly decreases the amount of chicken we are buying for our hard-earned dollars?

The end result of this investigation is that my family will be decreasing our intake of “protected Namibian chicken” for the traditional Wambo chicken. Not only is it cheaper on our pocket, but also will decrease the “hidden salt” that we put into our bodies without our knowledge.

And let us be honest, I have now learnt how to brine, and can make a juicier, tastier traditional Wambo chicken than before.
Thank You Namibian Poultries.

A rose by any other name - electronic signatures

(First appeared in New Era 18 February 2015)

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” is a reference from William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. Juliet is trying to convince Romeo Montague that it does not matter what his surname is even though her family and his are enemies.

The past weekend it was once again Valentine’s. The day is named after Saint Valentine and little is known other than his name and that he was martyred and buried at a cemetery in the north of Rome on that day. In modern times, it has become a business bonus and extremely commercialised. I even noted a large banking concern had teddy bears and hearts in their expansive foyer as if it was Xmas.

On Valentine’s Day it is tradition to give the one you love a present and also possibly a card with a special message and your signature. Some of us are so unsure about whether our love will be returned that we give a card signed ‘Secret Admirer’.

Your signature is a hand-written (possible stylised) version of your name and is often used to confirm your identity. This unique signature is a very powerful thing. Think about it: It has the power to transfer money from your bank account, to show your undying love on a Valentine card and to vote new laws into place. A signature can turn any piece of paper into a legally binding promise that can be upheld – in other words the bridge connecting a promise made and that the promise is kept.

Presently in Namibia there is no substitute for the original signature on a document. You could fax or email a copy of the document you signed but this will not hold up in a court of law. In plain terms it means that as long as your signature is genuine and the document original, the document is legally binding.

As technology has advanced, it has brought us easier ways for businesses and consumers to communicate and has resulted in most of our documents to shift from snail’s mail (posted letters) to electronic mail (email). In many countries the digital signature is now taking the place of hand-written ones.

In Namibia, we are expecting the government to pass an Electronic Transactions Bill that will catch up to the rest of the world. The Deputy Prime Minister, Libertina Amathila, reported in November 2004 that “… the working committee responsible for putting together the country’s first bill to govern and regulate use of electronic communications and transactions in Namibia says it will soon complete a draft to be presented to Cabinet by year-end.”

Amathila said the legal certainty to be established by such a law is to ensure that one’s rights are protected and that a person can have legal recourse in instances of misuse or criminal intent. The Bill aims to recognise electronic writing, signatures and records which will carry evidential weight, subject to certain conditions, in any legal proceedings.

The law might be ten years in the preparation, but like so many things in the world, Namibia takes long to implement but by the time we do we can learn from the mistakes of others. This leap-frogging means that by the time the Electronic Transactions Bill becomes a law it will include not only the long-awaited electronic signatures but should also clearly spell out what is considered criminal and civilly liable on all forms of social media. (For example cyber bullying, libel or slander as well as extortion and fraud.)

But let us look at what an electronic signature is and what it means for you as a consumer. An electronic signature, or e-signature, is an electronic means that indicates that you accept the contents of an electronic message and more broadly could be used to indicate that you who claim to have written the message is who you claim to be. The most common way to do this is to include your verified electronic signature in all emails and other form of electronic communication.

This will enable all of us, whether consumer, business or government, to easier and faster conclude transactions with one another in a trustworthy manner.

The only danger is that as we make our transactions more dependent on technology, we will have to be even more wary that it is not abused and our identities are not stolen. After all, I want be sure that the gift or card I received on Valentine’s Day is really from my wife. I would really not like to explain the present that I received and thanked my wife for, when it comes from someone else.

Equality does not mean justice

(First appeared in New Era 4 February 2015)

THE birth of our son has brought us a lot of pleasure, but also added to our responsibilities, and worries for what the future will bring. At the same time my father is reaching pensionable age and I have been assisting him in ensuring his financial security. This has meant looking at both the financial services that we must put in place for our children, as well as examining the services that my father had planned. These include how we manage banking, pension funds, savings accounts, medical and hospital cover as well as purchasing larger items like a motor vehicle and a house on credit. All these products and services are meant to ensure that we can sleep more peacefully at night because we have the knowledge and ability to access them.

The question remains though at the back of my head, “What if these services were not available to me?” And the even larger question looms, “What about my fellow consumers who struggle to get the same access to allow them to sleep peacefully at night?”

The issue of access to financial services and products is referred to as “financial inclusion”. This term is often used by the Bank of Namibia, Namfisa, Ministry of Finance and the Financial Literacy Initiative (FLI) to encourage the providers of these services to widen the net to allow more “inclusion”.  When looking at financial inclusion, I prefer to define what services consumers are being excluded from so that we can identify what should be addressed. Very often the exclusion of consumers to financial services include: a) insufficient income; b) high risk of non-payment; c) discrimination (on the basis of race, marital status, etc.); d) lack of information – both by the clients and by the service providers; e) weak contract enforcement by the courts; f) product features – use of technical terms for example that are not fully understood; and g) price barriers due to market imperfections.

Thus financial inclusion means minimising or removing financial exclusion arising from market or government failures. Some supporters of financial inclusion want to see a situation where banks do not even charge a fee when a client deposits money for safe-keeping.
However, one of our regular readers who is a financial advisor warns of the expectations that these services should be provided at no cost. “Although technology has advanced so much that we can reduce costs significantly, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Costs will just be claimed somewhere else.”

Financial service providers use the issues mentioned to design their products and services and this (unfortunately) leads to the best services and products being offered to the more well-off clients. The people who need these services are thus being penalised twice – on the availability of the service and the extra high cost they must pay to make use of the service. The financial providers however insist that all clients have equal access to their services.

When all is said and done, peace of mind is essential to all Namibians. We as the consumers, and government and service providers need to take ownership and have justness in solutions for all consumers. After all is said and done, we cannot continue with the belief that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Honour thou Elders that thou days may be long

(First appeared in New Era 28 January 2015)

The past week my father called me from South Africa to come and assist him with his pension pay-outs he has to receive now that he has turned 65. My father was born during the apartheid era (in Walvis Bay) and had completed his schooling in the Cape Province of South Africa. After school and a few years I the private sector, he had chosen the army as a career and was enlisted in the South Africa Coloured Corps. This was his job and not just the normal two years stint (conscription) that was expected of every citizen. He spent several years serving in the army, including doing duty in the northern parts of the then South West Africa.

When I grew of age (being 18), there were many arguments in our house as I was an active member of the student organisations protesting against the South African occupation of Namibia. Having been born in Windhoek, I feel I am a citizen of Namibia even though my father felt he was on the side of the South Africans.

After Independence, it took a few years for the arguments about politics to eventually also accept reconciliation as a reality. For me the turning point was in 2004 when my father was declared disabled and unfit to continue employment. It was at that time that the Bible’s commandment of “Honour thou Mother and thou Father that thou days may be long” really struck me.

At that time in 2004, my father was fighting the banking system that refused to accept his disability and were threatening to auction his house as he was not able pay his mortgage. This despite the fact that he had an insurance policy (taken out by the bank) that was supposed to cover him in the eventuality of death or disability. The bank in question insisted that his disability was a “previous condition” and thus not covered by the policy. After a year-long battle with me at his side, we were able force the bank (yes, we had to force them to meet their obligation) to accept the medical reports of experts and have the insurance policy pay off his mortgage.

This lesson of what businesses do to avoid giving satisfaction to their customers (and thus making more profits) is what led me to becoming the consumer activist I am today.

As consumers we have started to have culture of “consumer social responsibility” towards our elderly as we willingly allow pensioners, pregnant women and people with disabilities to be served first when there are queues.

I would like to see our businesses in Namibia also take this attitude and provide their corporate social responsibility through discounted prices for the elderly, and not only on groceries, but also public transport, electricity, water and telecommunications. Would it not be wonderful if our elderly could receive up to 50% discount on their water and electricity and perhaps even completed amnesty from paying rates and taxes to the local authorities? It would be gladdening to my heart (and, according to the Bible, add years to my life) if the government owned enterprises would also provide a minimum number f credits or products and services to the elderly as a way of honouring for their many years of service to our beautiful, peaceful country? These state-owned enterprises and agencies include MTC, Telecom, Namwater, Nampower and even the local supplier of Coca-Cola, Namibia Beverages to name but a few.

On this topic, would it also not be a sign of a mature country to provide sufficiently for our elderly with a state pension of at least N$ 1,200 per month? If we give this a little thought, perhaps we too can honour our mothers and fathers that our days on earth might be long.

#MTC pay back the money

(This first appeared in the New Era of 14 January 2015)

THERE is a quote I like to use when giving consumers advice, “He who buys what he does not need steals from himself.” This advice is normally given before the festive season to remind others (and my own family) that no matter how tempting the advertisement is of a product, always ask yourself whether the product has any use in your life.

I can show you more than a cupboard full of things that I have bought over the years that I have never used. This advice is of course only usable if you are the one doing the buying – sometimes you receive a gift and you smile and say thank you without knowing whether you will ever use the gift in question. I still have a Bart Simpson tie that I will never wear.

When I became a consumer activist I noticed how consumers are misled through advertising (or the savvier word “promotion”) to purchase something they do not need and then have no recourse to getting their money refunded. This has led to many countries introducing a “cooling-off period” – a period of time during which the consumer may cancel a purchase. In this way the purchase of (especially) expensive items like houses and vehicles can be cancelled if the buyer becomes aware that they may have bitten off more than they can chew. This is also often the case when in the shop and the salesperson convinces you of the product they are selling rather than of the product you need.

Last month I did not buy SuperAweh airtime from MTC as I usually do when at work. My week of special phone call prices had expired but then I received a message from MTC that I was being charged N$2.00 for “future data usage”. I do not need data for my cellular as I have a laptop and unlimited 4G access and I thought this is rather presumptuous. I was rather angry, as “I had just bought what I do not need” and was stealing from myself.

Rather than steal from myself, I activated the SuperAweh package and thought nothing more about it. A week later, MTC sent another SMS informing me that my SuperAweh would expire and I should renew it. However, this expiry happened at midnight of the day indicated and, lo and behold, I found myself stealing another N$2.00 from myself at exactly 2 seconds past midnight.

Upon enquiry on social media I became aware that I was not the only consumer stealing from themselves. The worst case was a company that owned a fleet of cars that were using tracking devices over the cellular network. These devices were installed securely within the vehicles and this was done purposefully to prevent thieves from being able to remove the devices.

This company with a fleet of over 50 trackers now find themselves stealing over a N$100.00 a day for data usage – because MTC has made it the responsibility of the user to opt out of the promotion.

The regulator, the Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (CRAN), received numerous consumer complaints during this period and reacted very quickly. In the press release CRAN clearly states that “the mandatory imposition of this promotional tariff and placing an obligation on the consumer to cancel the participation in a promotion, which the consumer has not initially subscribed to, is not in line with the provisions of Section 79 of the Communications Act and can therefore not be supported by CRAN”.

Aha! I was not buying something I did not need, but rather MTC was charging me for a service I did not need.