Officials dismissed for certifying substandard aquaculture products

July 22, 2016 - 14:05

Deputy Prime Minister Trịnh Đình Dũng has asked Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Deverlopment in co-operation with police to investigate a testing agency that reportedly falsified documents to allow 800 substandard aquaculture products to be sold.

A farmer is harvesting tra fish for sale in domestic market. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development will investigate a testing agency that reportedly falsified documents to allow 800 substandard aquaculture products to be sold. — Inlustration
Viet Nam News
HÀ NỘI — Deputy Prime Minister Trịnh Đình Dũng has asked Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Deverlopment in co-operation with police to investigate a testing agency that reportedly falsified documents to allow 800 substandard aquaculture products to be sold.
The deputy PM on July 21, 2016 ordered that the detailed list of the substandard products as well as measures to recall them from the market had to be submitted to the Prime Minister by the middle of next month.
Dũng’s order comes in the wake of recent local media reports. Officials of the aquaculture surveying, testing and accreditation centre under the directorate of fisheries allegedly prepared false documents to certify more than 800 aquaculture products such as 140 feeding products and 668 products used to improve aquaculture growth conditions, even though the products did not undergo any tests.
Some of the products are said to be harmful.
According to local media reports, any aquaculture product must undergo tests that usually take months or a year before being granted certificates for circulation, if they clear the tests.
However, companies reportedly could get their products to clear any test if they paid VNĐ5 million per product to a group of officials at the testing
centre.
Since 2013, the group, including Centre Director Bùi Đức Quý and seven other employees, had falsified documents, allowing more than 800 substandard products of 70 companies to be sold in the market.
Office Secretariat of Directorate of Fisheries Dương Văn Cường said that Quý and five employees involved in the scam had been fired.
The directorate issued a decision, nullifying all illegally issued documents, and asked relevant parties to deal with the substandard products. — VNS

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