Police authorities in Vietnam have reportedly confiscated an estimated total of 345,000 used condoms which had been cleaned up for resale as new.
According to Reuters, footage broadcast by Vietnam Television (VTV) showed bags containing the used contraceptives scattered across a warehouse in the southern province of Binh Duong.
The state-owned TV also quoted police as saying that the bags weighed over 360 kilograms (794 lbs), equivalent to 345,000 condoms.
The warehouse’s owner said they got “monthly input of used condoms from an unknown person.”
A woman detained during the raid also told police that the used prophylactics were first boiled in water, then dried and reshaped on a wooden phallus before being repackaged and resold.
She said she received $0.17 for every kilogramme of recycled condoms she had produced.
Amid the COVID-19 upsurge in March, experts predicted a global shortage of condoms after the world’s largest producer was temporarily forced to stop operations as economic activities halted.
“We are going to see a global shortage of condoms everywhere, which is going to be scary,” he said,” Goh Miah Kiat, CEO of Karex Bhd, had said while expressing his fears at the time.
“My concern is that for a lot of humanitarian programmes in Africa, the shortage will not just be two weeks or a month. That shortage can run into months.”