Dark Tourism in Ghana: A Pathology of Consumer Protection

By Jean Lukaz MIH, MTS

Yesterday a family of nine was kaput from eating contaminated food. Well, call it food poisoning, suicide, homicide, or consumercide, the culprit this time was food that was injurious to health and unfit for consumption and the victims are already dead.

When consumers die from food poisoning, the culprits go free...it is a dog’s world. Anytime the cause of death is food-centered, authorities in Ghana seem to play a certain kind of music reminiscent of the world of ‘let the dead bury their dead’…life is so cheap, who cares? All deaths from food poisoning are treated as if they are cases of cholera: the cause is in the corpse. Like Thomas Hobbes observed on the effects of rationalization, “

men have undertaken to kill their kings… provided before he do it he call him tyrant. For they say not regicide, that is, killing of a king, but tyrannicide, that is, killing of a tyrant, is lawful.” [LEVIATHAN, XXIX].

School children die from food poisoning and the traceable food vendor is back the next day to sell and kill more kids: business as usual. It is much less disconcerting to take credit for having a reducing balance formula for number of deaths caused by food poisoning as the years go by in order to show how we are improving.

In a country, where imported vehicles that have been declared not road worthy in the originating countries, after being involved in motor accidents, are a luxury and are free from legal encumbrances, deaths from motor accidents caused by defective vehicles bearing tested and passed license plates instead of ‘DV’ number plates do not receive much attention. Grim and gory photographs of motor accident deaths are a big sell for newspapers because we have grown to become thana-tourists of our bereaved existence.

Just stand by the roadside each morning and watch soon-to-happen disasters: school children being transported in smoking and decrepit buses like bags of rice packed on top of each other destined for quasi-luxury private schools and ask yourself who really do not care…PARENTS! And they will blame the government for lack of regulation when the former have got brains, eyes and two feet to vote with.

Do we have to go far? Presidential campaigners fall through a constructed platform right in camera and they become a laughing stock. See who’s laughing out loud? The contractor! Party goers die from food poisoning and it is ungrateful to take on the irresponsible host for sending you to your grave earlier than you pretended. When you go unlucky with fake medicines, it was a clinical trial gone badly and that makes it legally sound as a dose for those who need to cleanse their consciences from cognitive dissonance.

A case of CAVEAT EMPTOR --let the buyer beware—consumers in Ghana have long remained pawns on the chessboard of Consumer Protection.

Pathology is a branch of medical science that studies the causes and nature and effects of diseases including evidence of mentally disturbed conditions but this consumer disease does not need be diagnosed by autopsy since the causes of death are not in the corpse but are rather staring in our faces daily. Thanatology, the branch of science that studies death has become our social diet.

And as if we love the dead more than the living, there always seems to be more money to be made through funerals than through christenings, even if there is no insurance money to be claimed. This is forensic evidence that our nation Ghana has gone pathologically mad again…only short footbridges to cross from gastronomy to pathology to thanatology and we are the new living tourists seeking thrills from the dead.

Fake, Fake And Fake Again!

By Prof. Lade Wosornu
Saturday, 01 December 2007
http://www.newtimesonline.com/content/view/12726/222/

Fake, fake and fake again. Bogus… Imitation… Counterfeit…You see them everywhere… Currencies spare parts perfume DVDs CDs cosmetics fabric dresses shoes booze bags accessories watches brief cases suit cases cigarettes cigars diamond gold bishops priests….

What makes you think that medicines should be free of fakes? Because human lives are directly at stake?

To whom can you turn?

The barons of fake drugs (fakes for short) do not give a jot about your life or mine. Money is their craze. And, it is war out there. They, in one camp, regulators in the other. They do not care what collateral damage is done as they pursue their ill-gotten gains. If Madam Aku Shika, fish monger at Chorkor, gets shot in the cross-fire, just too bad.

Of all the chilling manifestos of these new slave traders, few can be frostier than this: "If God didn’t want them sheered, He won’t have created them sheep."

So, to whom can you turn? Concerning drug regulation systems, it has been shown that only 20 per cent of WHO member states have well-developed ones; 30 per cent have none. In any event, governments and agencies can look out for you so far, but no further. You must learn to look after yourself.

Few fakes get caught, and even fewer deaths from fakes are detected. Best of all, if they get caught, the penalties are less severe.

Fake dealers know all that. They count on all that, as they tot up their dollars but ignore the corpses off whose flesh they feed.


The individual?

What can the individual do to protect himself or herself? Not much! Madam Veronica Gargo, chair, Tsokor Vigilantes, was explaining: "Don’t blame Aku Skika. The ‘pharmacist’ took her new Cedis and gave her capsules for fever. He even said: ‘Actually, Aku, you are lucky. These are the last six capsules left."

So, Madam Gargo shrugged her shoulders and sighed: "How for do!"

She is in good company as witness this report. "In developing countries, public education is also poor. A study in Laos showed that over 60 per cent of peddlers and 80-96 per cent of consumers knew nothing about fakes."

The report adds: "Better education might not make that great a difference. Over 50 per cent of the world lack access to hospitals. A sick man is a desperate man. He will take whatever he can get." Even if it’s fake?

"Ohiafo heor nii ke djirawale." This is Gã: "The poor buy expensively!" And, some times, it would seem, they pay with their lives. But, in this corner, who is counting the dead?

This is G "The poor buy expensively!" And, some times, it would seem, they pay with their lives. But, in this corner, who is counting the dead?

Even the enlightened

What makes you think that only un-lettered stereotypes are hood-winked, conned and down-right robbed in day light? Mr. Oto Weley, faceless ‘aplanke’ and stand-by driver who, first thing in the morning, shows up at the lorry park reeking of ‘fumes’? Or, Madam Mercy Badu, dealer in second-hand beads?

Professor Dr. Dr. Kofi Bosu, PhD, MB, ChB, is current president, Skin Researchers’ Guild. (Pardon me, but the gentleman really prefers the triple appellation: professor, doctor and again doctor.) An experienced traveler, the professor-double-doctor was buying another rolex at Laguna International.

"Is it genuine?" "Fake? Sir? How? Of course…Give you good discount." "How much?"

Gerald Abu, 25, unemployed, of no fixed abode, could scent blood. "You special customer… First today. 50 per cent.... 60…75 per cent..." And so, the professor-double-doctor paid $ 500 ($1,750 in duty-free) ….Smiles…Handshakes…. Two weeks later, in James Town, the ‘gold’ started to fade and the rolex stopped.

For ‘rolex’ substitute Viagra, Multivitamins and the unending life-style products.

Source

Technology makes fakes easier to produce and the Internet speeds the pace of commerce. Sales of fakes will reach $75 billion globally in 2010, an increase of over 90 per cent from 2005.

Fakes have found a natural home in some countries. There has grown a deadly industry. The poorest nations are paying the price, where 50-70 per cent of medicines are fake (WHO). It has been called "One of the greatest atrocities of our time… Mass murder… A form of terrorism against public health…Economic sabotage."


Serious imitation, serious business

Today’s fakes are often impossible to distinguish without chemical testing. The packaging is identical to the real McCoy.

"It used to be amateurs. Now scientists have entered the fray. They can replicate products quickly, complete with perfectly copied packages in amazing detail. Mind you, the content can be boric acid, floor wax and yellow paint."

The business may be criminal. But it is serious and highly organised. The countries which house the perpetrators, also have their share of victims. "Bi ni ker enye akawor ler, ler hu ewong." This is Ga. The child who says his mom should not sleep, also shall not sleep."

See how organised crime runs their fake businesses: networks with suppliers, buyers, distributors, financiers, markets. They have CEOs and CFOs with managers for production, shipping and follow-up.

The manufacturing is a multi-step process in the same town. One factory makes the pills, another ingredients, a third labels and even holographs…Then wholesale markets across the country, followed by global distributors – overland, by air and by ship and so to Africa. Shipments tend to go through mega-ports. Why? Because, where is the safest place to conceal pebbles? Pebble beach…

They also know the markets well. Different drugs for different populations: life-style versus life-saving. There’s also a price-point differential: Expensive (fake) brand names go up to rich Texas. Fake generics and over-the-counter stuff come down to Hwidiem.

Not all economies are created equal

The big boys take care of themselves. In developed countries, the big Pharmas are Alsatians. They jealously guard their brand, their market share and customers. Not so in developing countries. Our markets are less profitable, brand loyalty is fickle and societies less litigious. So, why should they look out for the likes of us?

Tackle the roots

Efforts are being made to cut the problem off at source. Central governments are becoming more effective in the war on fakes. But, problems remain at local authorities. Rules passed in capital cities are not always enforced in Kejebi.

Take this market as an example. A city, 650,000…Six hours south of a capital. Over 30,000 wholesale distributors…Over 40,000 different types of products. Between 80 to 90 per cent are perfect fakes. A host of other businesses support the market and employees. These include hotels, night clubs, transportation and storage.

A new slave trade

If an official were to shut down the fake market, that would ruin the local economy, bankrupt businesses, raise unemployment and create social unrest. This, social unrest, is one thing governments fear most- even more than the black plague.

Therefore, cracking down on known fake cities may be too little, too late. For one thing, factories shall move to shadier, less regulated places. For another, buyers from your town and mine will pursue the loot and not allow them to be closed.

Such are the moguls of this new slave trade. And, here is their favourite value statement: "If God didn’t want them sheered, He won’t have created them sheep".

You’d better watch out for yourself.

**Lade Worsonu is a Professor in Surgery, King Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia.

Hidden Flow: The Rising Tide of European e-Waste in West Africa- GHANA

Consumers’ Right to Ghana’s Water

by The Consumer Partnership (THE-COP)

Access to a basic supply of water and sanitation is widely recognised in principle as a fundamental human right. The United Nations Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights adopted a General Comment on the Right to Water in November 2002. This puts an obligation on governments to extend access to sufficient, affordable and safe water and sanitation services progressively to all citizens without discrimination. This right, which we support, is also established in Agenda 21, in the Declaration of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development and by the 4th P7 Summit on Water (a meeting dedicated to the world’s poorest countries).

To meet the Millennium Development Goals of halving the number of people without access to water and sanitation by 2015, 400,000 new connections need to be made each day for water and 500,000 for sanitation. This is estimated to cost approximately U$25 billion of investment per year. Debates about water policy focus on how to find the funds for this large investment and how to manage water resources to meet the basic rights of all.

Some of the sharpest disputes have been about private sector participation, often promoted as a means to inject capital and management expertise. Consumers International’s (CI) research shows that private sector involvement, which can take many forms, has in some cases been very valuable (eg rapid network extension, community involvement in informal settlements, leakage reduction, integration of informal vendors) and in others has been disastrous for consumers (eg rapid price rises, premature contract renegotiation, failure to meet expansion targets). In the same way, some public supply systems are excellent, and others are very bad. There should be a code of practice for water utility operators, be they public or private operators.

CI therefore promotes a set of principles which should be applied to all water supply systems, whether in the public sector, entirely privately managed, or a mixture of the two. These principles reflect and support the statements adopted within the United Nations.   

Consumer principles

1.      Consumer rights  Water is a basic need and access to it is therefore specifically recognised in the first of the eight internationally accepted consumer rights. Access to sufficient safe water is essential for life itself, as a vital contributor to public health, and for personal dignity and fulfilment. Water is not just a commercial product like any other and it is a primary obligation on responsible government to make the right to water a reality.

2.      A public good  Water itself is a public good and must remain so. Rights to extract water from sources such as natural reservoirs, rivers and aquifers should be controlled by public authorities, with due regard for the needs of producers, consumers and the environment.

3.      Shared resources Natural water resources are shared between states and cross their boundaries along river basins. Access to water for all consumers must be the overriding objective in reaching equitable agreements about water use across geographical and political boundaries. 

4.      Regulation  Whether provided by public institutions, the private sector, or a combination of the two, water treatment and distribution systems should be subject to effective state regulation to promote and protect the public interest. Regulation should cover access - including as necessary, pricing policy, safety, and service quality (cut-offs, pressure maintenance, billing, for example). Regulation should also cover small scale vendors  where relevant.

5.      Consumer involvement  Consumers should be involved in the regulatory process, including in both establishing and implementing of these regulations. Stakeholder involvement should start with the assessment of needs and objectives and the analysis  of possible utility management models to meet these. The provision of full and timely information is essential for effective stakeholder involvement at all stages.

6.      Pricing  Water pricing, and the use of any subsidies, should be transparent and also equitable between groups of users in similar circumstances. Poverty should never be a barrier to access to a basic supply of clean water and to effective sanitation.

7.      Payment and subsidies  Paying for the water supply should be properly costed and the means to pay for it identified and planned. This includes both capital and operating costs. But recovery of full costs from charges to users should not be the only approach. Public interest objectives such as improving public health and enabling communities to escape from the unproductive drudgery of time-consuming water collection, should be taken into account and if necessary supported by subsidies.

8.      Avoiding waste  Water is a scarce resource and making it available to all, especially the poor, is a challenge for all countries and communities. Consumers have an obligation to respect the wider public interest by avoiding wasteful use, ensuring that they do not contaminate the supply, and paying their due share of the costs of supply.

9.      Private sector obligations  Private companies providing water services have an obligation to respect and support effective regulation, to play a responsible part in delivering social objectives and, where they operate internationally, to apply good safety and service quality standards in all countries.

10.  Polluter pays The polluter pays principle, covering both preventive measure and clean-up costs, should apply to natural water resources and to water distribution and sanitation systems.

Credit: Consumers International (CI) and Water & Sanitation Program (WSP)

Undiscerning Consumers: The New Terrorists On The Block

By Jean Yaw Twum Lukaz

If you also believe that second hand ‘home-used’ products are more durable, cheaper than and superior to quality brand new ones, you are welcome. You just joined the new suicide bombers terrorist cell of ‘Shoddy Consumer Products Patriots (SHOCPPAT)’. Ghana, apparently, is more worried about SHOCPPAT members than coup d’etat planners. The new menace of shoddy consumer products and their nonchalant patronage by uninformed or otherwise indifferent bargain-hunting Ghanaian consumers is generating an unhealthy workforce for the posterity of this nation.

Consumer Terrorists

Many in Ghana have questioned the role of consumer protection groups, consumer advocates and consumer activists in the country in the face of shoddy goods and services at 50. The same people questioning are the very ones patronising these shoddy goods and services given all the many quality alternatives. It is not surprising that it is even the so-called high-class shopping malls or supermarkets that are peddling in expired reengineered luxury goods.

Some major rice importers in the country are rebagging expired rice in newly dated sacks- freshly sealed. If you have been discovering the weevils in your perfumed rice with a 5 years to expiry date, join the club. Frozen fish is thawed, painted, and sold as fresh and when unsold at the end of the day it is refrozen to conceal its discoloured decay and resold to members of the terrorist cell, SHOCPPAT, who cannot tell the difference between fresh fish and a singing sea bass mould.

When consumers are undiscerning in their choice of products on the market due to either ignorance, indifference or lack of consumer education, it is not just the individuals that may suffer the consequences but also neighbours and the nation as a whole. Cases in point are the prevalence of fake electrical products and junkyard rusty-leaky second hand LPG bottles. Both cause fire and burn more than just the owners and their properties. The patriots of these two arson products are the worst terrorists ever, not necessarily the ones George Bush is worried about, but those that our ‘Castle’ should probably be paranoid about.

Read the Label, if you are illiterate

Labelling is essential for the information of consumers. Consumers need to know what, where, when and how the product is to be used for their own health and safety. When products are used wrongly because of bad labelling, the company involved may be liable for damages but the effect on the life of the consumer may be irreversible. Food labelling is one area that Ghanaian consumers may ignore due to their familiarity with the products but it is one area that is having an adverse effect on their health and safety. There are two main objectives in food legislation - the protection of the consumer and ensuring that food and its ingredients are correctly described - and labelling is the key to both. The label should tell you some, or all, of the following:

1. The name and address of the manufacturer – so you know who to complain to if something is wrong

2. The name of the food (e.g. Cheese and Tomato Pizza)

3. The weight of the food (e.g. 250g) - this will help you to compare food from different companies and work out which is the best value for money.

4. Instructions on how to store it (e.g. keep in a fridge)

5. Instructions on how to cook it (e.g. 450F/230C for 20 minutes)

6. A list of ingredients (e.g. sugar, cheese, flour, flavouring etc) - it is important to know what is in the food you eat, especially if you are allergic to certain ingredients or want to avoid too many additives in your food.

'Best Before...'can only be used on foods which have a minimum life greater than six weeks and that cannot be affected by micro biological deterioration - breakfast cereals, frozen food and tinned food are good examples. Tinned food does not last indefinitely - ingredients such as tomato sauce for example can attack the protective coating of the tin.

'Use By...' warning on a food label must not be ignored as it indicates that the food is high risk and could probably cause food poisoning if eaten after the indicated date - examples are high protein foods like fresh meat pies, sausages and dairy products. Products that have the 'Use By' date must always be handled with great care, particularly in warm weather when micro-organisms grow at an accelerated rate. It is also important to remember that contaminated food will not necessarily smell 'off' or taste bad. So what happens to illiterate consumers in this case? Your guess may be as bad as mine.

Who wears the Crown?

How often do you not see street vendors selling a diary product, that require storage in a cool dry place, in the heat of the sun right near the offices of the manufacturer? After a week of bronzing these heat-sensitive consumer products in the sun, some lactose-sucking adult consumer buys them in traffic, three a pesewa, in exchange for the health and safety of all their family. African germs may not kill, but ignorance and indifference do- slowly… Do not blame some of us consumer advocates for your witting, narcissist-self-destructive suicide consumer bomb of inaction when you are down. Certainly, the companies do not care about the state of their product at the point of consumption otherwise they would take the pains to educate the peddlers as to the conditions of sale of their produce- call a sachet/bottled water and a milk producer and do not forget about the regulators either.

Yes, consumers in Ghana are kings as long as they carry the manufacturers and distributors in palanquins, an unfortunate role reversal in a comedy of sorts. As long as the manufacturers know we are willing to make them richer however shoddy their products, Ghanaian consumers shall enviously watch them wear our crown while we kowtow in genuflection to their whims.

0800-Complain

When was the last time you picked up the phone, called a company consumer hotline (if there was any on their product) and complained about their shoddy product or wrote to them with copies to the regulator of the sector, be it the Food and Drugs Board (FDB) or the Ghana Standards Board (GSB) or other and a Consumer Protection Organisation?

Anytime companies advertise their products aggressively, however shoddy, consumers can only make an impact in reaction to such unethical practices by equitably complaining insistently. Without consumer complaints, manufacturers, regulators, and policy makers all assume that everything is all right even though they may have personally experienced that shoddy product or service. Consumer protection organisations rely on a database of consumer complaints in order to confront the appropriate authorities in charge of regulating a particular sector before they can influence policy.

Most companies in Ghana lack a complaints management system as part of their quality assurance mechanism and ethical business practices. They, thus, make it more difficult for consumers to complain about their unsatisfactory products and services. Consumer protection is a vocabulary they do not want to hear forgetting that customer care in itself is a consumer protection measure from an internal orientation. With the introduction of toll free numbers by Ghana Telecom, we are looking forward to seeing many of these organisations grab some complaints hotlines at no cost to the consumer. Consumer complaints, after all, is valuable feedback for any forward thinking organisation.

Only a vibrant complaints culture can force businesses, regulators and policy makers to act so join the bandwagon. Complain (but do not forget to boycott that shoddy product) and add your voice to the quest for high quality product and service standards for a higher standard of living in Ghana. A healthy people make a healthy nation.

 Published in Public Agenda on 19th December 2006: www.ghanaweb.com/public_agenda

*The author is a Consumer Advocate and he can be reached at Http://www.theconsumerpartnership.org 

My Drinking Water From Your Latrine

*By Jean Lukaz

When I touched down four years ago and questioned why people buy sachet water instead of drinking the ‘pure’ borehole alternative in the absence of piped water, little did I reckon that my secondary school science knowledge may be flawed. The water meters in Taifa-Burkina were just part of the exterior décor of houses and quite unlike the poisoned gas taps and showers in the Nazi camps, the taps in the area bill you for pure air…

Borehole water in Apatrapa, near Kumasi is not as salty as the same source of water at Taifa near Accra. And if you happen to live on a flat land, on top of a hill, on a slope, or in a valley, your borehole water may taste different depending on what soil-related activities are taking place on the land right up or next to you.

Drinking ‘pure’ KVIP Water?

Due to the lack of treated water supply in Honourable-Reverend-Professor Mike Ocquaye’s Taifa constituency almost one in five houses own a quasi-permanent water supply from below in the form of borehole wells that are used for both domestic and commercial purposes. At the same time, those that are thrifty have found ingenious ways of cutting down on the cost of water use by building an ‘Advanced KVIP’- a latrine with a WC on top I presume... in place of a water-run WC. The borehole water in this area is by no means tastier and salty due to the probable impurities it contains. My argument here may have no scientific basis but commonsense is all the ordinary consumer needs to be able to examine any situation that affects their status quo.

Soak away…

Cost-cutters have found old ways more beneficial and have resorted to the ‘soak away’ method of draining their domestic sewage. Outflows from the kitchen, bathroom and more recently, the toilets have all been directed to the soak away for onward seepage into underground water neighbouring borehole water systems. It may be cheaper avoiding the sucking costs of the Yafurus, Zoomlions, Jogmas, etc, but the deliberate recycling of toilet water for borehole purposes is definitely going to yield results…possibly bigger balls than the strange disease that has reared its ugly head in some villages in the country.

In as much as almost all the residents of Taifa buy clean or contaminated sachet water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, dishwashing and bathing are all done with borehole water. Pray that you never go broke if you are resident in the community, or you may be forced to drink some of the borehole stuff. Boiling before you drink is advisable but what if you cannot afford the extra energy cost?

Does the advanced-KVIP next door to or on the premises of a borehole water seller ring a bell? And some of these benevolent businessmen have attached pure water factories to their ‘pure’ wells and are selling the obvious.

Consumer Rights

This piece may sound provocative but the supply of drinking water is a consumer right as well as the provision of sanitation facilities to communities. And if my knowledge of languages serves me any purpose, Aqua-whatever-Vitens has definitely got something to do with water, precisely piped water supply in Ghana with rumored jurisdiction over underground water supply from KVIPs and soak aways as well.

There is tension between water as a scarce economic resource and access to water as a human right. The right to the satisfaction of basic needs, the right to safety and the right to a healthy environment are consumer rights all related the provision of water and sanitation services by the government. Safe water is crucial for life and health, its availability and affordability for the entire population are of enormous welfare and political importance.

 Cost

There are much higher costs of water for unconnected people compared to those with piped supply. A sachet of half-litre drinking water costs 300 cedis, equivalent to the cost of 10 litres of borehole water in Taifa: 20 times the quantity. In some areas of Accra, it costs even more and many have franchised the work of the Aqua-whatever-Vitens Ghana Water Company by blocking a whole neighbourhood’s piped water supply for their monopoly Russian-style.

Are we worried?

Published in Public Agenda on 16th April 2007: www.ghanaweb.com/public_agenda

*The author is a Consumer Advocate and he can be reached at Http://www.theconsumerpartnership.org 

 

Robbery On Our Streets?

*By Jean Lukaz

Hardly a day passes without the usual harassment of street vendors touting all sorts of items from newspapers to car accessories to other consumables. A cause of worry is the sale of cigarette and gas lighters, catapults, pocket knives and machettis our streets. Since street robbers started attacking road users with some of these replica pistol-shaped gas lighters, syringes and machettis, scarcely were any of the victims alert as to whether they were being sold the ‘weapon’ or being attacked until…

Ghanaian consumers have always been at the mercy of lax laws or the enforcement of seemingly effective ones. In some advanced countries like Britain, the possession of a knife or any sharp weapon in public is itself a crime let alone touting same in the street for sale.

The Ghana Police Service once warned on the sale of replica gun-shaped objects and toys when armed robbery was on the rise in the country but soon suffered from amnesia, a common disease with law enforcement in Ghana.

So you want to buy a rifle-shaped lighter on the streets with engines of vehicles running. How do you test for product quality? Of course you may need to light it in the midst of petrol and diesel packed street without cognisance of any leaky ones and BOOM! Forget about the fire service and call a water tanker… but both will come in handy.

A machetti peddler approaches your vehicle. You ask how much and he tells you ‘10 million cedis’.

‘You’re mad?’, you ask.

‘No’, comes the reply.

‘Your money or your arm?’

Whew… No time to discern whether he is a street vendor or robber as the sight of your own blood will depict how serious he is.

A syringe-touting street vendor may be an unusual sight but that is definitely a junkie, and not a nurse! You may have a choice between HIV/Aids, your money or your car… No lesser evil here.

How about the recent trend of hitchhikers on our streets? It may not sound like a consumer issue until you have the opportunity of partaking in the hooker experience. An opportunity if you are a sex tourist. A see-through, low neck, low back, low waist line ‘I’m-not-for-sale’ young women desperately in need of hitching a ride to an unknown destination apart from yours are the ones that will be creating a scene when you ask them to get off your vehicle.

‘Pay me or I’ll call my pimps, you dirty b _ _ _ _ _ d!’   

It may be easier to comprehend all these situations if they occur in front of the Psychiatric Hospital. It is rumoured that everyday some of the inmates are released onto the streets to test whether they are back to ‘normal’. Subjectively, all of them will be normal except you, the victim.

The consumer hotlines of the Police are always engaged. These robber-killer-hooker-junkies need them more than you do. So anytime you step out of your home, PLEASE BE A VIGILANT AND DISCERNING CONSUMER!

 

Published in Public Agenda on 16th April 2007: www.ghanaweb.com/public_agenda

*The author is a Consumer Advocate and he can be reached at Http://www.theconsumerpartnership.org 

Ghanaian Consumers Can Sue Electricity Conpany Of Ghana (ECG)

...BLAME HIS [ECG MD] IGNORANCE AND THE MISSING CONSUMER PROTECTION BILL...

...says Jean Yaw Twum Lukaz MIH, Consumer Advocate

Ignorant and arrogant statements by Mr. Jude Adu-Amankwah, Managing Director of ECG, marked the moment of truth for the lack of a Consumer Protection Law in Ghana. The Consumer Protection Bill is still lost in the files of the /ministry of Trade due to the manipulations of companies like ECG who feel threatened by its provisions. The Consumer Protection Bill is still under the carpet so that Ghanaian Consumers can continue to hear the trumpets of ignorance coming from "unenlightened" people in his likes.

For a whole Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) Boss to make such a statement with the intention of intimidating Ghanaian consumers is a sad story. Mr. Jude Adu-Amankwah, Managing Director of ECG, called the bluff of Ghanaian electricity consumers when he made the statement that consumers are helpless receivers of poor electricity supplies who are receiving a favour from ECG and not a service demands his resignation. He simply does not understand the responsibilities he has been given.

Commercial influence in our politics and judicial system is degrading consumer protection in Ghana whilst denying Ghanaian Consumers of their rights. Lack of a small claims court and Consumer Redress systems makes consumer actions a matter beyond the reach of poor Ghanaian consumers.

Electricity Companies have been sued worldwide and Ghana is not a new story. Consumers will need to initiate a class action against ECG. The problems arise when it comes to proof but consumers do not need to be technicians to prove that ECG is supplying poor quality electricity to Ghanaian Consumers. The equipment needed to consistently measure and record the quality of electricity being delivered to Ghanaians is not readily available but simple experiments do the trick.

In most of the developing countries where consumer class actions have been brought against electricity suppliers and consumers have won the adjudication has been rooted in the existing Consumer Protection Laws which give consumers a framework for redress. Examples are India, Indonesia, Philippines, etc.