Its director, Norena Jaafar, said her officers had found some buffalo meat traders passing off frozen meat as fresh produce.

“During our monitoring earlier, we discovered that traders were selling buffalo meat at RM22 per kg instead of the set price of RM20 per kg.

“Enforcement officers have issued warnings. If the offence is repeated, compound fines will be imposed on the traders,” she said after monitoring the implementation of the Festive Season Maximum Price Control Scheme, in conjunction with Hari Raya at Pasar Besar Melaka here today.

Also present was state unity, community relations, manpower and consumer affairs committee chairman Ismail Othman.

Norena also advised traders to be smarter in obtaining supplies from wholesalers who offered lower prices so as not to burden consumers in the current economic situation.

“There are chicken traders who claim they had to increase the price because they obtained supplies from their regular wholesaler at a certain price.

“Traders should be able to find alternatives and acquire cheaper supplies from other farmers or wholesalers. They must be considerate to consumers affected by price hikes,” she said.

Meanwhile, Ismail cautioned traders to display price tags for each item properly so as not to confuse buyers.

“A few traders put up confusing price tags and were issued warnings. This includes those who placed old price tags together with pink tags for controlled items,” he said.