Mumbai, Oct 14 (IANS) Jewellers Monday opposed the government's move on issuing hallmarking certicards for jewellery.

"The GJF has opposed the national standards body Bureau of Indian Standards' proposal to issue a certicard for the jewellery retailers in metro for each piece of jewellery sold," said All India Gems & Jewellery Trade Federation (GJF) chairman Haresh Soni. 

Soni has written to Consumer Affairs Minister K.V. Thomas terming the proposal as "cumbersome, impractical, expensive and time-consuming".

He said the proposal which would make it mandatory for jewellers in metros to issue a certicard with each piece of jewellery along with its photograph and unique identification mark is highly unviable and not customer-friendly.

Owing to this, the cost of each jewellery will increase by Rs.125-150 and, in mass production, it would be impossible to hallmark each piece of jewellery and issue a certicard, he said.

Moreover, Soni contended it would be an uphill task for the jewellers to maintain thousands of such certificates in retail outlets and retrieve them at the time of delivering the product to the customers.