Consumer protection
Mention the phrase “consumer protection” in Guyana, and the name ‘Eileen Cox’ must immediately come to mind as her name had, over the years, become almost synonymous with the concept.
But since the passing of this bulwark of the Guyana Consumers Association at the ripe old age of 96, there has been no singular replacement in terms of her trail-blazing advocacy and relentless dissemination of her message – that the fair treatment of consumers is a basic right and not a special privilege.
Earlier this year Guyana participated in a Caribbean Community (Caricom) workshop to strengthen the risk assessment and product safety capacity of the region’s Rapid Alert Exchange System for Dangerous Non-food Consumer Goods, (CARREX) which was developed in response to concerns voiced by consumer bodies of the need to strengthen the Region’s market surveillance for unsafe consumer goods.
Several weeks after the Caricom forum here at home, low-key observances marked World Consumer Rights Day 2017 which was held on March 15 under the banner of ‘Protecting Consumer Rights in the Digital World.’
This was a missed opportunity for us to build on any momentum from the Caricom meeting and engage stakeholders on government’s supporting infrastructure for CARREX, and more importantly, how it intends to provide online consumer protection.
It’s no secret that consumer rights continue to be violated in Guyana and with little or no formally structured redress being available to citizens. These violations expand beyond the daily commercial transactions in the city’s shopping districts, to contractors performing shoddy work for homeowners and failing to deliver on promised services.
Within months of being installed, the coalition government issued a public warning to business owners saying that the law governing consumer rights was going to be strictly enforced effective December 1, 2015. This enforcement has been as low-key as the observances last month for World Consumer Rights Day, and consumers here continue to document violations from business owners in personal exchanges and increasingly on their social media accounts.
Perhaps the Consumer Affairs Division of the Ministry of Public Communication could release current data on the number of complaints received within the last year and also