Hyderabad: Mixing gems and gold for extra bucks
The department has collected over Rs 82,000 as fine from 11 shops the city in the last four months.
Hyderabad: Have you been paying for more gold than what is present in your ornaments?
Department of Legal Metrology’s data says they have caught 11 shops in the city for frauds like adding the weight of gems to the weight of gold. The department found these shops during raids conducted in the last four months. Four shops were caught in August for duping customers.
“In most cases we find them adding the weight of the gem to the gold price. If the gem is one gm and gold is 10 gm instead of charging for both items separately they combine the weights. Gold costs more than gems. So it would cost the consumer more than the actual price,” explains Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy, the assistant controller of Legal Metrology.
The department has collected over Rs 82,000 as fine from 11 shops the city in the last four months.
The jewellers are also now not declaring the purity of the gold and have been caught making improper declarations about the purity of the gold. They are mandated under the Legal Metrology Act to declare the purity of gold as per its carat number.
The jewellers were also found manipulating weighing scales. “As per rules the jewellers have to clearly display the capacity of the weighing scales and calibrate the machines. They are mandated to keep a designated weight which is 1/10th of the capacity of the machine. So when the consumer places the weight in the weighing scale he can know how accurately it is working,” explains Mr Siddharth Kumar, Assistant Controller of Legal Metrology.
However, jewellers in the city say this separate billing is cumbersome and the benefit of it goes to workers and not jewellers.