Auto majors join hands to fight spurious spares

Automobile industry body Siam today announced a consumer awareness campaign to highlight ill-effects of using spurious spare parts to their life, auto firms, environment and also government by way of annual revenue loss worth Rs 2,500 crore.

The move is part of the World Anti-Counterfeiting Day, falling on June 8, head of the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM's) anti-counterfeiting cell Sanjoy Gupta, who is also the vice president, customer care at M&M, said here today.

Rajesh Bagga, co-chairman of Siam's anti-counterfeiting cell and vice-president for legal Tata Motors, stressed on the need for stronger implementation mechanism around the laws regarding copyrights, trademarks and patents to act as a deterrent for counterfeiters.

He also said over 50 per cent of the spares for all popular brands sold in the market are actually spurious and unreliable, while around 35 per cent of the estimated Rs 33,000-crore after market are spurious.

As per a study, counterfeit sales is leading to a job loss of over 1.15 million; wastage of 109 million litre petrol and 8 million litre diesel per annum, apart from 25,400 deaths and over 93,000 injuries.

He further said this was one of the major initiatives to connect with the customers and society at large to inform the concerns related to the use of spurious auto parts, especially when it comes to safety of critical parts such as brakes, suspension, headlamps, powertrain, electrical and electronics components etc.

Over 1,075 dealers, stockiest and distributors of several two-wheeler and four-wheeler manufacturers, including Tata Motors, Hero MotoCorp, Bajaj, Hyundai, M&M, Toyota Kirloskar Motor, Volkswagen, Volvo, Eicher and TVS, are participating in this drive.

Gupta said this drive was also important from the government's view point