Why ADH Group is accused of selling fake solar gadgets

PIC: Workers installing a solar system. An independent investigation indicates that ADH sells poor quality products

INVESTIGATION | SOLAR BATTERIES

Reports indicate that fake solar batteries, panels and inverters have flooded the Ugandan market.

When New Vision published a story about fake and potentially explosive solar batteries that had flooded the market, some of which is said to be sold by ADH Group, three weeks ago, the Uganda National Bureau of Standards and ADH Group dismissed the story as baseless.

They claimed that it was a case of business rivalry. That it is competitors trying to blackmail them. The ADH Group Uganda area manager, Harriet Bashemera, and the operations manager, Noah Kalumba, said the whistleblower wanted to extort sh300m from them and that when he failed, he decided to blackmail the company.

However, according to an independent investigation, ADH Uganda Ltd is not only accused of selling poor quality products, but also uses fake labels to con consumers.

The company says they offer "German Technology" and indicates on its batteries and solar PV panels that its address is ADH Solar GmbH & Co. KG, Schulstrasse 5,64689 Hammelbach, Deutschland (Germany).

However, a research in the electronic database of the German company register showed no results of a company with such a name. The given company address "Schulstrasse 5,64689 Hammelbach" leads to a parking lot next to the Hammelbach town hall, where there is no office or company.

On Facebook, ADH also tries to create the impression of a "Group of Companies" and gives a website which does not exist. The website www.adh-group.com does not open and does not show any company information. A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), commonly informally termed a web address, has been registered by a Chinese person from the town of Ningbo.

On the solar panels, ADH uses the Quality Logo of the TUV, which can only be used if the quality of the products have been tested and passed the test. Although the quality logo shows the Certificate ID 0000033012, a research in the database of TUV shows that this certificate ID is connected with a different company and that there is currently no valid certificate attached.

While ADH claims on its panels to have a certificate registration number AK 60079652, which they allegedly got after their factory passed the quality check, the certificate number leads to a different certificate holder. Even for this other holder, the certificate is no longer valid. Although belonging to an association is optional, ADH is not even known by the Uganda Solar Energy Association (USEA), though the association says they have heard their adverts over the radio.

Enters whistleblower

A whistle blower early this month said ADH Group Uganda, one of the biggest importers of refrigerators and solar accessories in Uganda, was selling counterfeit solar batteries as UNBS just looks on.

The batteries in question were the ADH, Air Star and Boyan, which are said to use glass to store electrons, which give off light, instead of lead. Batteries that use glass are said to fluctuate and cannot provide a large current for a sustained period, compared to the lead ones.

Glass solar batteries are also considered a potential threat to users as they can easily explode. The whistleblower says in May last year, his colleague who used to buy batteries from ADH shops in downtown Kampala to resell in his Kawempe-based shop, was overwhelmed by customer complaints about the fake solar equipment.
He thus consulted a metal caster, who cut the batteries to test their quality. To their dismay, three of the four batteries that were cut had glass. Only one had lead. They then reported the matter to Kawempe Police Station, but were referred to the Central Police Station (CPS), Kampala because the solar equipment was bought in Kampala. Upon reaching CPS, Godwin Tumugumye, the Detective Senior Superintendent of Police, asked them to get other samples to confirm that the batteries in question were from the said shops.

They provided the money and the Police officers bought four other batteries from the two ADH Group shops — Market Street and Nabugabo — and it was confirmed that they had glass material to store electrons.

The company address leads to a parking lot next to the Hammelbach hall in Germany

UNBS involved

When the whistleblowers reported the fake batteries to the Police, the latter wrote to UNBS, requesting them to provide details of the importers, including letters of origin of their products and certificates of conformity to standards, to help in Police investigations.

It should be noted that the Government, through the trade ministry, introduced the Pre-import Verification of Conformity (PVoC) scheme in 2013, requiring all imports to be verified for quality in the manufacturing country before being shipped to Uganda.

The move, which was to be enforced by government agencies, including UNBS, sought to address the challenge of counterfeit and substandard goods flooding the Ugandan market.

Following the Police letter, UNBS is said to have made surveillance inspection at ADH shops on June 30, August 4 and 5 and took some batteries for analysis. The agency later told the Police that it lacks capacity to test solar batteries of 30 amps and below other than batteries of 12 volts and 7 amps. According to the Police letter dated May 30, 2016 and addressed to the UNBS executive director, the suspected counterfeit solar batteries were actually 12 volts and 7 amps.

The Uganda Industrial Research Institute also said it did have capacity to test the batteries. UNBS was then advised to try the Centre for Research in Energy and Conservation (CREEC) at Makerere University for laboratory analysis.

Telling a genuine solar battery from a counterfeit one requires laboratory testing, according to CREEC managing director Mary Susan Abbo.

Although the whistleblowers allege that the laboratory test at CREEC confirmed that the batteries were fake, UNBS did not submit the full laboratory report to Police. Instead, in a letter dated November 14, 2016, signed by the deputy executive director technical operations, Patricia Ejalu, UNBS wrote to ADH Group Uganda, saying the results from the analysis were not conclusive for UNBS to determine with certainty the quality of the batteries.

She then advised ADH to go pick its batteries from UNBS Standards House, Bweyogerere, a city suburb.

In the same letter, Ejalu writes to ADH saying: "Please be advised that all your future consignments must go through PVoC before shipment to Uganda to avoid re-occurrence of similar incidents." This means that although PVoC is compulsory to all importers, there are unscrupulous traders who are not complying and government is quiet.

The whistleblowers then pushed the Police to pursue the matter, and they (Police) allegedly took the case file to the state attorney, who rejected it because it did not have statements from the implicated traders.

The whistleblower then engaged the Commander Kampala Metropolitan Police, Frank Mwesigwa, who asked the officer in charge of the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) to get the Makerere laboratory analysis report from UNBS. Noticing that the earlier involved officials were dragging their feet, the whistleblowers then reported the matter to Criminal Invesigations Directorate (CID) headquarters.

When contacted early this month, John Dhabangi, the Ag. Commissioner of Police, Economic Crimes and Financial Intelligence Directorate of Criminal Intelligence and Investigations, acknowledged being told about a solar battery file that was being mishandled at CPS. However, he said he had been away for a month and is not sure whether a formal complaint was lodged at CID headquarters.

But the officer in charge of invetigations, Johnson Bale, said the Police is following up the matter and could not provide further details. It is close to a year.

ADH Group Uganda is said to belong to a Chinese, only identified as Zhou.

(Adopted from the New Vision of Thursday, March 30, 2017)