Improving measurement for consumers in the Philippines

The Local Government Unit (LGU) of Santiago City, Isabela regularly conducts inspection of weighing scales in their public markets. However in spite of their regular and aggressive weighing scale inspection campaigns, they still received many complaints from consumers.

As a result, the City approached the Department of Trade and Industry, the Office in charge of consumer protection for assistance but were referred to the National Metrology Laboratory (NML) of ITDI being aware it was a legal metrology concern.

After an initial consultation between the LGU of Santiago City and the NML, it was agreed that the NML conduct a 3 to 4 day training for the City’s Inspectors to culminate with a dialogue with the City Mayor and his Council. During the pre-training evaluation, it was discovered that the reason for the inspectors not finding anything wrong with the weighing scales in the public markets were due to the following:

• proper verification procedures were not used,
• verification standards were not available or sufficient,
• available verification standards were not calibrated.

In the dialogue with the City Mayor at the conclusion of the training activity, the NML suggested the improvement of the relationship between the City and the sellers by giving them incentives. The City was requested to provide “Tama ang timbang dito” (“Correct weights here”) signs to sellers who voluntarily submit their weighing scales for inspection. This way, consumers would rather patronize sellers with the sign than those without it.

Feedback later received from the City relates that the system resulted in more sellers submitting themselves for inspection because the signs attracted more customers. This was a complete opposite to the resistance encountered from sellers who often resorted to violence during inspection that required the presence of police escorts. The City also tells that consumers from nearby places even prefer to buy from the Santiago City public markets because of their "zero" fraud record since the implementation of the system.

Written by Manuel M. Ruiz from the story of Michael Jason A. Solis, National Metrology Laboratory Philippines, Nov. 20, 2018