Firm engages CFTC on bottled water determination

Zamm Investments, manufacturers of Cool Drop bottled water, has petitioned the Competition and Fair-Trading Commission (CFTC) to seek clarification on the determination the commission made last week.

In the determination, CFTC recommended that Zamm Investments should be prosecuted for allegedly selling water that was not safe for consumption.

The water in question was part of a batch that the firm sold earlier this year.

But Zamm Investments managing director Mohamed Tutla said in a statement that his company has been treated unfairly because it cooperated with CFTC and withdrew all the water which contained debris.

He said the firm “voluntarily withdrew” and recalled all the bottles affected under the batch, even when the results showed that only 12 percent of the batch in question was contaminated.

In a telephone interview, Tutla said: “It does not seem fair to penalise us when we cooperated with the investigation.”

CFTC spokesperson Innocent Helema said the tests conducted by the Ministry of Water and Sanitiation and Malawi Bureau of Standards (MBS) found that the sample passed the turbidity test, but some of it was not safe to drink.

“However, upon further conformity tests by MBS, the sample failed on other microbiological tests, which entails that the particular batches were not safe to drink,” he said.

However, CFTC managing director Vincent Nkhoma acknowledged that it was only water in one batch of the tested samples that failed the tests.