President Uhuru Kenyatta has warned traders and business owners against hiking commodity prices amid coronavirus spread scare.
Speaking at State House on Wednesday morning, Uhuru urged the business fraternity to avoid taking advantage of other Kenyans as the government deals with the crisis.
“To our traders and supermarkets, do your business but do it justly, no one is opposed to you making profits but indeed it is highly immoral if you take advantage of an unfortunate situation to make huge profits,” he said.
The head of state further noted that the government was cracking down on unscrupulous traders trying to make a killing during this period.
“Please, when it comes to hand sanitizers, to food and other goods and services, I appeal to you to act like the way our friends in the banking sector have done, act in the interest of our country,” he continued.
A rather sad Uhuru noted that the only way to fight this pandemic is by coming together as one.
“We need to pull together as Kenyans to overcome the health crisis and the associated issues that are most likely to develop,” he said.
On Monday, Competition Authority of Kenya indicated that through investigations, they have determined that Clean Shelf Supermarket had unconscionably adjusted prices of Tropikal brand hand sanitizers (500m1) in contravention of the Competition Act No.12 of 2010.
“The Authority has determined that the retailer on 15, March 2020 sold the same batch of product to consumers at varying amounts above Kes. 800/=, including Kes. 1000/=, with the prices increasing within hours,” read the statement.
As a result, the retailer was ordered to refund all its customers who purchased the tropical brand hand sanitizers following investigation that they were being sold at different prices hourly.
So far Kenya has confirmed 7 cases of coronavirus.
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