Weighing tools found malfunctioning. Telegraph pictures

Paradip, April 29: Consumers are being routinely taken for a ride by unscrupulous traders by cheating on weights. From gold and silver to petrol and vegetables, customers fall victims to such cheating everywhere.

The metrology department, hit by infrastructure deficiency, has totally failed to curb the nefarious practice. “Customers are being cheated with under-weighed goods. There are question marks on the genuineness of the weights and measures tools being used by traders right from roadside vendors to big shops,” said Ramakanta Sahu, a resident of the port town.

“It should not be construed that all traders are resorting to such unfair means. Under weighing of sold goods has become a common practice in vegetable markets and ration shops. Besides meat and fish markets, allegations fly thick and fast that things are being sold through short-weight metric system tools,” said Ajay Mohanty, a consumer rights’ activist.

The crux of the problem is that there is gross absence of government mechanism to plug this manipulative trend. The legal metrology department, which is duty-bound to regulate the misuse of weights and measurement, is functioning but only on pen and paper. Besides the civil supplies wing of the administration, the police are also empowered to deal with lapses in weights and measurement.

Besides petty traders, it is widely believed that established businessmen dealing in gold and silver jewelleries opt for short-weight method to earn a fast book particularly during peak festive season and marriage months.

The automatic weighing scales installed in a majority of such shops were defectively run to cheat consumers. Petrol-filling stations were also no exception to unfair practice. Heavy “weigh-bridges” set up along the national highway to weigh mineral ores were also not free from weights and measure irregularities, the consumer activist said.

“For time to time, glaring irregularities of this nature have been brought to the notice of both the legal metrology department and civil administration. But things remain the same as enforcement measures are conspicuous by absence,” he added.

“We lack both in infrastructure and manpower. I head the legal metrology department here as senior inspector and I am backed up by a subordinate. Besides the enforcement job in Paradip port town, we are covering adjoining Kujang and Tirtol blocks. It has become quite an uphill task to regulate the weights and measures’ misuse with such skeletal manpower,” said Shivaji Kumar Behera, senior inspector of the Paradip-based metrology wing office.

“Despite the deficiencies, we have booked 47 cases under Standards of Weight and Measurement Enforcement Act, 1985, against traders who resorted to short and under-weight weights. The guilty traders included petrol filling stations and Rs 1,69,500 was realised from them as penalty,” Behara added.