Sharpening, increasing consumers' awareness
Thursday, 21 May 2009
Ahmed Ali
THE Jatiya Sangshad last month passed a legislation, Consumers Rights Act, which is full of positive potentials for the millions and millions of consumers in the country. The latter have been, so far, left hardly protected against the unconscionable and unscrupulous activities of producers, distributors and providers of goods and services respectively. Whatever consumer protection laws existed, were considered hardly enough to protect the consumers thoroughly. The new act covers every nook and corner of consumption and has recommended an array of measures for the consumers to complain, to have the same responded and for the established wrong doers to suffer notable penalties involving fines, seizures and imprisonment. Thus, the Consumers Right Act. was hailed for filling a big void. It was described in various forums as heralding a new and hopeful era in protecting the long exploited and harassed consumers of Bangladesh.
But the passing of a comprehensive legislation is only one side to this phenomenon. Consumers across the country seem to be fully aware about what sorts of cheatings, hazards and exploitations they have to absorb. But they seem to be grossly unaware or uncaring about their rights to react to the evils. Even before the passing of the Consumer Rights Act, consumers had some rights under prevailing laws to seek redress actions. But the great majority of them were unaware of these rights or were reluctant to explore or utilise the same. This has been the attitude due to the poor and unorganised state of the consumers in the country or the lack of strong consumer protection organisations or movements. The lone Consumer Association of Bangladesh (CAB) proved to be hardly capable of addressing the huge tasks in its hands. Thus, a discussion meeting on these issues, organised some days back by several organisations, strongly recommended motivation campaigns to accelerate the awareness building of consumers about their rights or their newly acquired ones under the recently passed comprehensive Consumer Rights Act. The speakers in the meeting observed that more than 80 per cent of the people do not know that they have any rights which they can press for upholding by producers and sellers. This is indeed a piece of shocking news that only a small per cent of the population of over 150 million have any notion at all that they have some rights as consumers or that these rights have been very substantially increased under a newly introduced law.
It is only common sense to conclude that people will not seek protection under a law if they have no knowledge about it in the first place. It becomes the responsibility of the consumer-oriented organisations to rapidly disseminate the information about the new law and ways and means of seeking redress actions under it. But these organisations may be constrained by limitation of resources and other factors on their part although the creation of new such organisations should be logically encouraged by the coming of the Consumer Rights Act. Furthermore, the existing ones ought to fill spirited enough to take on expanded activities to give wide publicity to the new legislation.
But at the outset, the government should be taking the lead in these matters in view of its capabilities, resources and responsibilities. A special campaign needs to be launched immediately under the ministry of information to run for a sufficient duration that would aim to educate all segments of the consumers about their rights as consumers and what they should do or where to go to in the event of wrongs done to them. The campaign will have to be sustained in the mass media for a long period of time on a regular basis for the greatest number of people to get the targeted ideas and doables well imprinted in their minds.
Side by side, it is imperative for the government to set up at the fastest all kinds of institutions including consumer protection related special courts for the consumers to start appealing for remedies under the new act.
THE Jatiya Sangshad last month passed a legislation, Consumers Rights Act, which is full of positive potentials for the millions and millions of consumers in the country. The latter have been, so far, left hardly protected against the unconscionable and unscrupulous activities of producers, distributors and providers of goods and services respectively. Whatever consumer protection laws existed, were considered hardly enough to protect the consumers thoroughly. The new act covers every nook and corner of consumption and has recommended an array of measures for the consumers to complain, to have the same responded and for the established wrong doers to suffer notable penalties involving fines, seizures and imprisonment. Thus, the Consumers Right Act. was hailed for filling a big void. It was described in various forums as heralding a new and hopeful era in protecting the long exploited and harassed consumers of Bangladesh.
But the passing of a comprehensive legislation is only one side to this phenomenon. Consumers across the country seem to be fully aware about what sorts of cheatings, hazards and exploitations they have to absorb. But they seem to be grossly unaware or uncaring about their rights to react to the evils. Even before the passing of the Consumer Rights Act, consumers had some rights under prevailing laws to seek redress actions. But the great majority of them were unaware of these rights or were reluctant to explore or utilise the same. This has been the attitude due to the poor and unorganised state of the consumers in the country or the lack of strong consumer protection organisations or movements. The lone Consumer Association of Bangladesh (CAB) proved to be hardly capable of addressing the huge tasks in its hands. Thus, a discussion meeting on these issues, organised some days back by several organisations, strongly recommended motivation campaigns to accelerate the awareness building of consumers about their rights or their newly acquired ones under the recently passed comprehensive Consumer Rights Act. The speakers in the meeting observed that more than 80 per cent of the people do not know that they have any rights which they can press for upholding by producers and sellers. This is indeed a piece of shocking news that only a small per cent of the population of over 150 million have any notion at all that they have some rights as consumers or that these rights have been very substantially increased under a newly introduced law.
It is only common sense to conclude that people will not seek protection under a law if they have no knowledge about it in the first place. It becomes the responsibility of the consumer-oriented organisations to rapidly disseminate the information about the new law and ways and means of seeking redress actions under it. But these organisations may be constrained by limitation of resources and other factors on their part although the creation of new such organisations should be logically encouraged by the coming of the Consumer Rights Act. Furthermore, the existing ones ought to fill spirited enough to take on expanded activities to give wide publicity to the new legislation.
But at the outset, the government should be taking the lead in these matters in view of its capabilities, resources and responsibilities. A special campaign needs to be launched immediately under the ministry of information to run for a sufficient duration that would aim to educate all segments of the consumers about their rights as consumers and what they should do or where to go to in the event of wrongs done to them. The campaign will have to be sustained in the mass media for a long period of time on a regular basis for the greatest number of people to get the targeted ideas and doables well imprinted in their minds.
Side by side, it is imperative for the government to set up at the fastest all kinds of institutions including consumer protection related special courts for the consumers to start appealing for remedies under the new act.