Retailers prosecuted, fined for selling short-weighted fruits

Seven fruit retailers have been fined from $1,000 to $3,400 under the Weights and Measures Ordinance after pleading guilty in court to selling short-weighted fruits in the first eight months of this year. Another ten fruit traders will be prosecuted shortly for the same offence.

Examinations by the Government Laboratory found that the shortage between the net weight and the claimed weight of the fruits ranged from 5 per cent to 35 per cent.

During the past few months, officers of the C&ED, posing as customers, conducted test buys and bought fruits such as grapes, longans, lychees, mangosteens, cumquats and cherries from various retailers in Causeway Bay, Wan Chai, Aberdeen, Kwun Tong, Mong Kok, Jordan, Tsuen Wan and Yuen Long.

Investigations revealed that among the 17 traders, an itinerant fruit hawker had sold short-weighted cherries to the officers with an inaccurate scale while the rest had claimed the weight of goods sold to the officers was heavier than the actual weight.

Under the Weights and Measures Ordinance, any shortage in the quantity purporting to be supplied is an offence. The maximum penalty is a fine of $10,000.