Coronavirus: How a trader was scammed into buying baby lotion as sanitizer in Kumasi

The mad rush for hand sanitizer continues to open an avenue of some unscrupulous persons who devise various ways to scam others and make huge money.

One victim of such an incident is a trader from Yeji who bought baby lotion in his desperation to acquire some hand sanitizer in order to fight the deadly coronavirus.

According to him, he bought the product for GHS70 at Kumasi in the Ashanti Region and all this while thought it was the original product until he came face-to-face with reality.

“This feels different from what I have. No matter the cost, I would not have bought the sanitizer. I do not know what a sanitizer is and the seller should have explained to me that the product was not a hand sanitizer. I bought it because I wanted to protect myself. I will now have to stop using it because there is no point. I would not have realised it if you did not inform me,” he complained on Accra-based Citi Fm.

On Monday [March 23, 2020] a Kumasi-based Journalist Barima Kwabena Owusu exposed some persons in Kumasi who were producing their hand sanitizer which falls below the standards

The modus operandi of such persons is collecting original bottles of hand sanitizer from companies which they clean and mix their own ingredients believed to be cassava starch and locally distilled gin, ‘Akpeteshie’ claiming it is the original contents of the container.

Barima Kwabena Owusu who blew the cover of these bandits wrote” Someone sold this, starch mixed with alcohol as hand sanitizer to a taxi driver for GHS90… Herhh nipa y? bad saa y? forkin”