Market researches on grease devils

 Market research companies have become the latest victims of the ‘Grease Devils’ phenomenon after it was found that a number of door-to-door research representatives were subject to harassment by residents who suspected them to be grease devils.

 One of the premier research companies in the country, AC Nielsen CEO Shaheen Cader said that company research representatives have faced a number of issues and have been unable to carry out their work due to peoples fear of the ‘Grease Devils’ who are suspected to be lurking in a number of village areas.

 “Residents have mistaken our research representatives for Grease Devils a number of times and this has become an obstacle that has made it difficult for us to do our work,” Cader said. He said that on one occasion residents had taken a research representative to the police suspecting him to be a Grease Devil. There have been a number of heated situations due to people’s fear of the Grease Devils.

 “We fear that problems of this nature will continue. We don’t want people to take the law into their own hands. If the problem gets more intense we may have to inform our clients and shift the research to other locations instead,” he said. It was mainly a rural phenomenon, he said. He said that at any given time AC Nielsen has some 250 research representatives on the field throughout the country.

 Survey Research Lanka (SRV), yet another local research organisation said that they too were concerned about the Grease Devil issue. “We are very concerned about this problem and fear that it will spread. However we are closely monitoring the situation to ensure that we are not faced with any problems,” SRV, CEO Neil De Silva said. He said sales marketing representatives and insurance salesman could also be subject to similar issues.

 Meanwhile Police Spokesman SP Prishantha Jayakody said that the police have been carrying out education programmes at village level to educate them on the Grease Devil problem. “We have informed the people that there is nothing that they should worry about, neither vendors nor others should worry about the Grease Devil problem. They can go about their work freely,” SP Jayakody said.

 The police recently arrested nearly 50 persons who were suspected to be grease devils.