Roadside “opticians” make brisk business selling medicated lenses to the low-income earners with eye defects. But this could just be penny wise, pound foolish, warns an optometrist
By Adesuwa Omoruan
From one small shop at Ikeja, the Lagos State capital, Mukaila Dickson runs his optical services. Dickson sells frames and medicated lenses, and from what TheNEWS observed penultimate Monday while waiting to have a chat with him, he seemingly commands an appreciable clientele. Under an hour, he had sold lenses to three customers while a fourth was waiting for him to be taken to the General Hospital, Ikeja for an eye test. So is Dickson a trained, orthodox optician, optometrist or opthalmologist?
Trained, yes, as he declared to this magazine but only on the job as a technician with no formal education in the relevant body of knowledge. As he narrated, for many years he understudied his father, who was equally a pseudo-optician all his life, after which he set up shop and has since been earning quite a tidy living. He has been on his own for five years and seems to be enjoying a good run of patronage. Like his father, Dickson is not thinking of veering into any other trade since the business, he said, is lucrative enough to enable him pay his bills. “It is profitable; I have a lot of customers,” he quipped.
Dickson could just be right. On Broad Street, Lagos Island and Yaba and Ikeja on the mainland, traders in medicated lenses run small shops where, for the low and middle-income earners who require such lenses, they are filling in the gap believed to have been created by the unaffordable charges of the orthodox eye doctors. Beyond Lagos, the technicians can also be found across the country doing brisk business in commercial centres like Ibadan, Enugu, Kaduna and Port Harcourt.
Unlike what obtains in conventional eye clinics, shops of Dickson and his colleagues lack the array of sophisticated equipment that appropriately define professionalism. The technicians actually feed on the prescriptions of opticians to make hay. Essentially, their services are limited to only providing lenses for defects of myopia (short-sightedness), hypermetropia (long-sightedness) and reading for which tests have already been conducted at conventional eye clinics and the corrective prescriptions made. A customer of the roadside eye technician only needs to produce the prescription for him (the technician) to provide the appropriate recommendation.
Lenses come in either glass or plastic form and the charges of the technician would depend on the haggling power of the customer as well as on certain value-added embellishments. The values include tinting, bi-focal and anti-reflection (for motorists driving at night) qualities. Prices of glass lenses range from N500 to N1500 while those of plastic are a minimum of N800. The technicians will fleece customers with poor bargaining power for as high as N5000. Peter Babalola, who plies his trade at Yaba, said he has as a regular customer a former local government chairman who is always willing to fork out nothing less than N4000 whenever he comes calling for lenses. The same product, Babalola admitted, he will readily give away for N1500 and still make a good profit.
Nearly all the technicians will not disclose to their undiscerning customers that the lenses come in both genuine and fake variants. As one technician on Broad Street confided in this magazine, importers of the lenses are increasingly shipping in fake products from Asia. These
imitations, whether glass or plastic, are not durable and easily lose their corrective quality.
Babalola, who said he has been in the business for over 10 years and has built up an impressive list of clients, boasted he takes home a minimum of N30,000 per month. The informal trade has become so entrenched that its practitioners collaborate with eye doctors at General Hospitals on certain services. For instance, the technicians have optician allies in these hospitals to whom they refer customers who require expert attention and prescription. After prescription, the customers, most of whom are unable to afford the high cost of the recommendations at the conventional optical clinics, cannot but patronise the roadside technicians for their needs.
Babalola stated that a new hand just setting up shop will require about N500,000 if he intends to take off on a fairly big scale. This amount covers rent for a small shop or stall and purchase of frames and lenses. He does not need to buy a cutting and shaping machine right away as there is always one at hand owned by a colleague and available for all the others to use for a fee. There is also no fee for registration with any professional body. The technicians, Babalola disclosed, are just grouping together to form an association. So with these traders lacking in core professional training in optics, how legal is the business? Dickson: “Of course, it is legal. It is a small-scale business and I pay tax of N10,000 yearly to the local government. If my business is not legal, the government would not be collecting tax from me.”
However, to the chairman of the Optometric Association, Lagos branch, Dr. (Mrs.) Eniola Ajayi, the claims of legality and tag of technicians are dubious. Ajayi, Managing Director of the Enny Eye Care Clinic, which has branches in Ikeja and Ikoyi declared that the optical business is not a trade for every Tom, Dick and Harry. The human eye, she said, being a very sensitive part of the body, demands the delicate attention of a well-trained professional, from the test stage to dispensing of glasses. She stated that it is in recognition of the sensitive nature of the eyes that courses in optometry and opthamology are not designed to be a fleeting read. It takes more than eight years to complete the Bachelor’s degree in some optical courses. Eniola herself bagged her first degree as an optometrist from the University of Benin and her Master’s from St. Thomas Hospital, University of London.
Enny’s clinic at the All Season’s Plaza, Lateef Jakande Road, Ikeja is a well-equipped affair, where patients’ eyes are put through thorough tests before drugs or lenses are prescribed. Ajayi knocked off the notion that fees charged by opticians like her are too high. In fact, she said, she occasionally offers free eye tests in her clinic. TheNEWS’ checks revealed that at standard optical clinics, the average registration fee is N500. While tests are actually rendered free in many clinics, the fees charged for drugs and/or medicated glasses thereafter are considered elitist and unaffordable by the poor and middle-income earners.
Prescriptions for minor eye problems that may not require more than drops could attract charges in the neighbourhood of N1000. Patients with serious eye ailments may, however, have to pay anything from N2000 to N5000, N10,000 and beyond, depending on the degree. What gives the roadside ‘optician’ a good share of the market is the relative high cost of medicated glasses at the orthodox optical clinics. For only N200, N300, N400 or N500, a customer will buy a frame for his lenses out there at the local technician’s shop. Whether the quality is top-class is a secondary issue, so long the product serves its immediate purpose and can even be durable if the owner is not the careless type.
On the other hand, frames at the opticians’ clinics can cost princely sums of N2000, N5000, N10,000 or N20,000. Babalola, the technician who sells frames and lenses at Yaba, revealed that the opticians are actually fleecing their patients by placing such high prices on their frames. Some of the opticians, he swore, buy their supplies from they, the roadside technicians for a song, only to pass them off to their patients as designer brands. “Many of their customers are blinded by their status, know next to nothing about quality and can afford to pay the prices demanded by the opticians without blinking, so it is easy for one party to cheat the other,” he explained. Babalola was quick to add that there are truly designer frames, some of them real gold, that do not come cheap. “Just as they sell these, we also do. And it does not need mentioning that the prices of theirs will be twice as expensive as ours,” he reminded.
The same price differentials apply to lenses. Whereas at the roadside technician’s shop, the range is N500 to N4000, opticians prices may go up to N50,000. An editor with this magazine who collected his medicated glasses recently from an optician paid about N45,000 for the service - frame, lenses and all.
Ajayi warned patrons of the roadside technician not to be carried away by the cheap prices that they offer.
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