Tanzania Daily News (Dar es Salaam)

28 November 2012

Tanzania: Fake Mobile Phones Must Be Flushed Out or Else

Photo: Chatham House/Flickr

TANZANIANS have been warned for the umpteenth time against the potentially dangerous use of fake mobile phones because there is evidence that they pose serious health complications, some of which are likely to culminate in the death of the user.

The most critical danger here is that women who tuck their fake phones in their dresses in the breast area are likely to invite an onslaught of breast cancer or other forms of cancers. But it should be understood that there are other causes that trigger breast cancer.

The other likely problem, it has been claimed, is that men who keep their fake mobile phones in their hip pockets are likely to generate mild or critical impotence. So far, there is no proven evidence on these claims, but behold, forewarned is forearmed.

Although these frightening claims may not have a grain of truth and we have heard a myriad of others, it is prudent to refrain from using fake mobile phones, some of which are quite expensive but work erratically and are not durable.

Some last only two weeks. Apart from the possible threat of health impairments, fake phones also impoverish people who buy them. Some fake phone brands are designed to enrich their manufacturers but impoverish consumers.

Now, this is offensive, to say the least. But fake phones are not the only nasty and highly offensive products on the local market. We have seen a wide range of fake medical drugs, including counterfeit malaria medicines.

A few weeks ago fake anti-retroviral drugs were discovered in government medical stores. The discovery complicated health delivery services to people living with the AIDS virus. In fact, greed for gain appears to have taken away compassion.

For some people humanity has diminished to such monstrous forms that they no longer mind causing deaths. Manufacturers of fake medical drugs are, by extension, killers who hoodwink the sick into taking junk in the hope of survival.

The victims end up delaying effective medication. Fake medicines are made in a rabid world where morons have no qualms about causing deaths. The local market is also full of other dangerous imports including fake home appliances that cause domestic accidents, counterfeit electrical fittings that start fires that consume homes, sub-standard cosmetics that cause cancers and even junk foods that sicken.

Fake mobile phones may not pose immediate danger but, beware, the bell has tolled. In Kenya the government has ordered a shutdown of all fake phones. Millions of such phones have gone off the air and it is suspected that some of them are on their way to Tanzania.

Tanzania and Uganda envisage taking a similar move in a quest to save their nationals from the long-term health consequences of fake phone use and save their economies. It is high time importers and users of fake phones saw the writing on the wall. Enough is enough!

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