My Warranty Experience@Compu-Ghana

By Jean Lukaz MIH, MTS

After a colleague was ripped off at AFTECH Computers in Accra and managed to get his money back, a comparative shopping exercise finally landed us at Compu-Ghana. This was after we had made a trial run to Starlite Computers and Dealer Computers, both at Osu. The wet paint on the wall of the staircase at Dealer Computers warned me after a stain in my suit, the only sure notice of opening hours painting. A soft-spoken boss named Ahmed could only apologise and infuriate us at the same time by showing us a similar stain in his shirt by way of asking us to shut up. Well, someone else deserved our cash of GH¢1,500.00 so we voted with our feet. He only reminded us of the ventriloquist Jeff Dunham’s comic character.

It appeared that Compu-Ghana had more to offer in terms of choice and budget. All was well till we were asked to pay for the Intel i5 Toshiba Satellite laptop, then the trigger of events began. When we asked to see what we were paying for to be sure, the sales folk were bewildered by the two gentlemen in suits that seemed to know their rights more than the rest of their clients. Why consumers are required to pay for their laptop while it is being removed from some warehouse is a case of ‘buying a pig in a poke’. A young gentleman later on appeared with a packaging in his arms, ‘Here you are, Sirs.’ And how do we know it is what we selected? The receipt only bore the code of the Toshiba Satellite Laptop without the specifications. I could not be bothered as my next move was to ask them to switch the machine on so we could verify the specs.

The answer actually required a trip to the Compu-Ghana Service Center located in the backyard. The reason for the trip was actually for software to be installed without our prior consent and not to answer our prying consumer savvy. The boss of the Service Centre treats every suit-bearing consumer as naïve and you could not blame her for that though. She has acquired her attitude through experience. She hastily filled in a Warranty Card for us to sign expecting some excitement from our end for their after-sales ‘irresponsibilities’.


Having chaired the ISO-COPOLCO Task Group on Warranties, I had just been given my favourite horse to ride. In fact, the Warranty Card of Compu-Ghana is a self-inflicting wound and tantamount to an unjust law and an unconscionable contract: it offers no warranty at all! What freaked me out was a clause dubbed ‘DOA’ [Dead On Arrival]—it reminded me of the morgue and the Death Certificates they issue to relatives of the deceased.

Wherever Compu-Ghana copied their warranty card details from, it was certainly not drafted by an expert. They have a new vocabulary ‘warranttee’ that requires certification, probably by the Ghana Standards Authority. The following Compu-Ghana-branded items were found in the non-biodegradable carrier bag:

1. a laptop bag,
2. a 2GB flash drive,
3. a mouse with retractable cable and
4. a rent-a-Skype headset.

However, clause 13 of their ‘warrantee’ does not cover any of these ‘gifts’. Clause 14 does not cover problems related to the software they installed at the Service Center but the consumer is not alerted to that for their prior consent. The Service Center staff asked if she could dispose of the card box packaging but when I inquired whether the very packaging will be required for claims against warranty her answer was affirmative.

It also appears that an unlimited warranty too-good-to-be-true is always a rip-off in disguise…ask AFTECH Computers!

Is there such a thing as Consumer Rights in Ghana?

by Jean Lukaz MIH, MTS

Never had I felt so stupid as a consumer advocate than the day the theory of ‘consumer rights’ was challenged at a conference for the fact that it lacked any legal basis in international law and in international relations. It occurred to me that either the consumer movement had got it wrong all this while or someone was wielding a powerful drilling tool, thereby reducing the issue of consumer rights to a complete nonsense upon stilts.

The ‘consumer movement’ went to work immediately to debunk this argument by extracting from UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection, ILO provisions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, which are all not legally binding documents in international law.

The moment the latter, bearing both first- and second-generation rights, was being translated into legally binding obligations, it was split into two separate treaties in 1966 [ratified in 1976] reflecting political and economic rights into the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The first of the treaties, being political in nature, consists merely of first-generation rights that did not require any resources to be provided for consumers to be able to enjoy them. The second treaty, second-generation in nature, bore less developed enforcement mechanisms for rights that cannot be guaranteed. These economic and social rights (second-generation rights) seemed to be blurring off in the business argument until the consumer movement attached governments as constituents of the Social Responsibility Standard, ISO 22000.

These second-generation rights rather require the allocation or redistribution of resources and very often are not enshrined in state constitutions for fear of opening the floodgates to consumers. Only Communist Manifestos and Communist Constitutions go that far in enshrining social and economic rights. So what happened?

The ISO Standard on Social responsibility (ISO 22000) was opening the floodgates for businesses to return to their thrones of ‘Caveat Emptor’. Strictly speaking, industry was invoking an old theoretical argument on the derivation of rights that suppose that the only proper use of the word ‘rights’ must be in relation to legal rights. In a like manner, they were asking Paul, the Apostle, to turn in his grave and rephrase some of his to ‘O consumer, where is thy sting?’
Burying my head into the question of rights led me to the issues of sovereignty, liberties, privileges, immunities and the ‘non-existent Constitutional Rights’ of consumers, a.k.a. consumer sovereignty.

• What is a consumer right if it does not impose duty on others and thereby making it less protected than it should be?
• What is a consumer right if it does not create liability in others?
• What is a consumer right if it does not grant immunity to consumers from being deprived of the essentials of life and tools of their trade upon which their very survival depend?
• What is a consumer right if it is all about liberties that are restricted by other right holders?
• What is a consumer right if the sovereignty of consumers is surrendered by their adhesion contract of citizenship that only guarantees them civil liberties as designed at will by the state at any point in time?
• What is a consumer right if none is wrong when they interfere with or restrict the exercise of it thereof?
• What is a consumer right if its application to the individual is restrained by advancing utilitarian arguments such as promoting the welfare of the majority?
• What is a consumer right if it is not a political, socio-economic or collective right?
• What is a consumer right if has no associated responsibility in the exercise of it thereof?

ECG Dances in the Jaws of PURC to Spite Ghanaian Consumers

By Jean Lukaz MIH

Resolved: On Tuesday, 12th July, 2011, the ‘Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) Customer Disservice Series’ released a new episode. The story not being an original script, a wrong meter reading resulted in a bill of GH¢ 57,000 instead of GH¢ 2,700, resulting in a power disconnection at the premises of CIT SYS Co Ltd.

According to ECG, it was an enforcement policy to disconnect high debtors immediately, even if it is their fault for not delivering electricity bills for over four months, for making the wrong reading [which is no reading at all but an estimation by a lazy meter reader], and for short-changing a Ghanaian consumer.

Even with instruction from the PURC, it took altercations, bigotry, chauvinism, arrogance and a snapshot of the old image of poor customer relations to get PURC’s instruction taken heed to. The ECG power suppliers are Conservatives that really know how to wield their power!

The protagonist, the District Manager of the ECG Makola Division was playing Don Quixote, feeling larger than life, and boasting of his power to disobey instructions from the PURC and the ECG Director of Customer Service.

The melodrama was a scene that depicted the ECG disconnection team robots blaming the ECG Billing and Claims Department for the inefficiency of the latter and claiming that the only way to get ECG to act responsively is for wrongfully disconnected consumers to rather put pressure on ECG as they (the disconnection robots) have to do their disconnection work anyway.

After all the corrections are made and the PURC instruction was finally heeded to, who now pays for lost business income resulting from the ECG billing mistake and the wrongful disconnection and when? PURC?

The prophesy of the Consumer Partnership was true as it has come to pass that the PURC lacks the drive to enforce its publicity stunts intended to make the organisation look consumer-friendly. Making laws and regulations is one thing and enforcing them is another ball game all together. The process of enforcement must go beyond letters and phone calls to bringing to book men behaving badly at ECG.

Look Who’s Siphoning My Power!

By Jean Lukaz MIH

I may sound alarmist but certainly many Ghanaian electricity consumers have not taken note of the poor quality of electricity that we are all receiving- a situation that obviously leaves us short-changed. The truth is, poor quality electricity is slow in output and takes longer to power certain appliances whilst costing consumers more.

To quote Brian Hitchen of the Sunday Express, UK, ‘technically minded people will scoff and say it is a figment of my imagination. But I’m sure that my electric kettle is taking longer to boil and that my toaster isn’t popping up quite as fast as it used to do. The electric kettle element is not scaled with limestone deposit and there are no lose wires or crumbs in the toaster…”

I decided to carry out a little research on this for one litre of water, boiled in a one-litre electric kettle of 1010 Watts and recorded the following times for different times on different days:

0630hrs- 05:39:40 secs
0645hrs- 06:30:48 secs
0700hrs- 06:30:81 secs
1300hrs- 06:59:46 secs
1600hrs- 06:45:53 secs
1930hrs- 07:12:72 secs
2045hrs- 08:22:38 secs

Obviously, my small research tells us something: it is expensive and a rip off to use your iron, toaster, kettle or any other heating appliance in the evening but cheaper when you use them before 6:30 am and 6:30 pm. Why do we have to pay a premium for using our appliances during peak hours and less during ‘off peak’ hours? How come the same electricity supply can last 05:39:40 seconds at one time and 08:22:38 seconds at another time to power the same appliance for the same task? Try this at home if you are a savvy consumer.

The world consumer movement has long recognised that electrical energy is of fundamental importance to public welfare and the well-being of consumers worldwide. The satisfaction of basic needs is one of the basic rights of consumers.

Electricity supply in Ghana has poor coverage and poor continuity of supply as well. That is, many people have no network connection and many of those that are connected face frequent interruptions of supply and ‘power surges’. In Ghana, consumers are constantly having their appliances damaged by such surges, for which no compensation has ever been paid. Well, can the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) be sued?. YES! YES!! YES!!... and as a class action…

Due to this malfeasance of a public utility provider, consumers (especially businesses) have made their own ‘off grid’ arrangements, thus switching between grids or dropping out of the system. All of a sudden, this misfortune has opened our third eye to the availability an usefulness of solar power, no bitters required.

If the ECG cannot live up to the ‘50 years of Freedom’, why can’t other providers be encouraged to participate and unbundle the mess? Competition among generators can take place even within the public sector (as in Norway) but unbundling is frequently associated with the introduction of private sector participation (PSP).

Despite the difficulties there have been some relatively successful examples of PSP. In Peru there have been improvements in coverage (nationally from 52 per cent in 1990 to 76 per cent in 2003) and long-term reductions in real prices since privatisation of the principal generators in 1990. Chilean electrification rose from 53 per cent in 1992 to 76 per cent in 1999, relying heavily on PSP. However, in both Peru and Chile, much of this improvement was due to government led programmes to improve rural coverage in particular since 1993. There have also been some less successful examples. In El Salvador, the period since privatisation in 1998 has seen high tariff increases (64 per cent) while tariff subsidies have been diminished progressively. In Honduras, the relatively recent introduction of PSP has had little, discernible impact on coverage. On the other hand, there are relatively successful publicly owned networks too even in relatively poor countries such as Costa Rica where coverage has been very high for a long period of time, or Morocco where rural electrification rose from 19 per cent in 1995 to 39 per cent in 1999.

It is still uncertain whether unbundling and PSP will constitute a long-term improvement but certainly, we do not need more power for ‘free night calls’ on our electricity bills so that our kettles, toasters and irons must work not to the detriment of a good night’s sleep and our consumer power.

NEWSFLASH: Electricity consumers across the country can now take action against the Electricity Corporation of Ghana and its affiliate institutions for erratic power supply. A new policy by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) and the Energy Commission, which seeks to regulate the number of hours electricity providers can interrupt power supply in a year has been outdoored after the recent Public Sector Policy Fair. Good work by PURC and Energy Commission but is it just an action plan that was designed to be rolled out as an outcome of the policy fair or is it just a publicity stunt designed to make them look good?

Well, Ghanaian Consumers, time to get your ready reckoner, a calculator, a watchman, and a Lawyer of course! How do you prove power outage in your area? Was the wiring of your house done with 'To Papa Preko'? Have you not overloaded your limited output sockets in your home? Does your ECG Meter give you a printout of the quality of electricity supply to your end that sometimes go up to +/-15% beyond the 220 volts? Was is your neighbour that caused the ECG supply pole to fall down and cut the supply? Is it a monkey that was caught between the wires that caused that blackout...and you blame ECG for the jumpy monkey? What a cheap publicity stunt!

**(with excerpts from Consumers International (CI) research material)

Towards A Rights-Based Consumer Protection Law for Ghana

By Jean Lukaz MIH

Ghana, while still embarking on the necessary steps towards a new consumer protection law, cannot presently boast of consumer protection legislation but rather a number of legislations that deal with consumer protection issues. The lack of a comprehensive consumer protection law is often to be blamed on defective national trade policies that have evolved over the years.

According to the Ministry of Trade, the Ghana Trade Policy approved by Cabinet in 2004 is set within the context of Ghana’s long-term strategic goal of achieving middle-income status and becoming a leading agro-industrial country in Africa. It was designed to provide the Ministry with clear guidelines for implementing Government’s domestic and international trade agenda as well as ensure a consistent and stable policy environment within which the private sector can operate with certainty. To ensure that these policy objectives are met through the structured implementation of policy prescriptions, a detailed implementation blueprint – the Trade Sector Support Programme (TSSP) - was developed and launched in February 2005. It details out specific activities in 10 thematic areas (which together contain 27 sub-projects) to be undertaken annually for the achievement of the policy prescriptions contained in the Ghana Trade Policy.
The fundamental principle underlying the Trade Policy Is that the private sector is the engine of growth, with Government providing a trade enabling environment to actively stimulate private sector initiatives. This is to be achieved through the full spectrum of trade policy instruments across the ten (10) thematic areas that have been the basis of the Ghana Trade Policy objectives.

The new Ghana consumer protection law is to be based on the Consumer Protection Policy as captured in the Ghana Trade Policy with the sub-themes of Consumer Protection, Health and Safety of Consumers, Economic Interests of Consumers, Access to Adequate Information, Consumption and the Environment, Consumer Representation, Competition Policy and Government Procurement. Short of a single fundamental objective, the new consumer law must ensure a fair and transparent market place in which the rights of consumers are recognized and protected. Protecting consumers’ economic interests is as important as regulation to ensure that the goods and services are available at a reasonable price and are safe.

Ghana being a Third World country, the problems of consumers are more related to the provision of essential services such as drinking water, sanitation, education and health care, than the market-related ones. The new consumer protection law must give special attention to the basic needs of disadvantaged consumers, in both rural and urban areas, including low-income consumers, and those with very low levels of literacy. It must clearly spell out the rights of consumers and the responsibilities of suppliers of goods or services and regulate all aspects of the purchasing cycle for goods and services, from the advertising or marketing of products, the sale of goods, full disclosure of product or service information to consumers, the terms and conditions of contracts and after-sales services including the respect of guarantees and warranties, refund and return policies. The Ghana Consumer Protection Law must integrate the universally accepted consumer rights into law by referring, implicitly or explicitly, to eight specific consumer rights, namely:

1. The Right to Basic needs
2. The Right to Safety
3. The Right to Information
4. The Right to Choice
5. The Right to Representation
6. The Right to Redress
7. The Right to Consumer Education
8. The Right to Healthy Environment

As constitutions of countries have evolved to reflect a citizens’ rights-based approach, so are consumer protection laws. The Consumer Protection Law for Ghana must move beyond mere consolidation of scattered sectoral laws and regulations to crystallizing and reforming consumer rights as enshrined in the various laws of Ghana as well as fair trading regulations.

This will ensure an easily-accessible, consumer-friendly, cross-cutting, rights-based approach to the development of a single, comprehensive legal framework for consumer protection. As the review of existing laws is inevitable considering that there are a number of obsolete consumer protection provisions that need to reflect modern consumer economics It should not be a mere major review of commercial and fair trade laws but must make provision for the drafting of new ones. It must cover much ground to the extent of providing for future innovative business fraud schemes and unfair trade practices.

Many developing countries on the various continents such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Botswana, Uganda, Malawi and South Africa have moved towards a comprehensive rights-based approach to their development of legislation for consumer protection that was guided by the UN Guidelines for consumer protection under the themes of Physical Safety, Economic Interests, Standards, Essential Goods and Services, Redress, Education and Information, and Health.
Beyond the establishment of a Consumer Protection Authority and Small Claims Courts, the Ghana Consumer Protection Law must move for the creation of the necessary institutions to take care of general consumer rights, product quality and safety and the specialized area of financial services that will all strengthen the Consumer Protection Regime such as a Consumer Product Safety Commission and a Consumer Financial Protection Commission.

As consumer groups in Ghana are moving for the new consumer protection law, which they believe will protect Ghanaian consumers, the Consumer Partnership is of the opinion that given the present environment of lack of legal enforcement compounded by a lacunae of resources, a new act of law is no guarantee of better consumer protection although it could be a first step in the process. The Consumer Partnership also believes that some of the voluntary standards developed by the Ghana Standards Board, such as the Advertising Code must be passed into law making reference to it as a Legislative Instrument (LI).

Consumer Protection is not a one-way street and requires consumers to act responsibly as no quantum of protection can secure irresponsible consumers. Consumer Protection is a process that involves consumers, service providers, producers and the government in a blend of roles and responsibilities. Thus, a working definition of Consumer Protection proposed by the Consumer Partnership given this background should include

‘the responsible ethical behaviour of consumers, producers or service providers in the respective buying and selling of products or services and the effective control of the marketplace by the government through the enforcement of laws and regulations, the promotion of standards and the dissemination consumer education.’

This presupposes that for consumer protection to exist, prevail, and be effective, the following conditions must be satisfied:
1. Consumers must be aware of their rights and responsibilities
2. Consumers must be responsible in the exercise of their rights
3. Consumers must be aware of the ethical consequences of their consumption
4. Producers and Service Providers must be responsible for the consequences of selling shoddy goods and services
5. Producers and Service Providers must be ethical in the conduct of their business
6. Government must regulate the marketplace through policy, laws and regulations
7. Government must exercise its responsibility of promoting standards, Consumer Education and Consumer Protection through an Ombudsman and other supporting agencies.

Of critical importance is the essence of Consumer and Business Education as a government responsibility even with the enactment of a new consumer protection law. Consumers need consumer education to build their capacity to act as rational and responsible consumers in the market place; Businesspersons need consumer education to build their capacity to become ethical businesspersons, to serve consumer interest, satisfaction and well‐being for a profit, rather than to profiteer from them; and Manufacturers need consumer education to build their capacity to become ethical manufacturers to serve consumer interest, satisfaction and well‐being, also for a profit and not mislead consumers to profiteer from them.

The actions of educated consumers and responsible businesses are often highly effective in minimising the harm caused by shoddy services and unsafe products. More importantly, they do so in a way that poses the least obstacles to business activity and to the ability of consumers to choose the goods and services that they prefer.
Responsible businesses go to considerable lengths to ensure that the products which they market are safe for consumers and that consumers are provided with sufficient information to use products safely. Many Ghanaian consumers take for granted that they need to educate themselves about the safety characteristics of the products which they purchase.

In their own bid to protect themselves, Ghanaian consumers need a set of tools to equip themselves with knowledge for their own safety. These tools of self-protection include protecting and optimizing their limited resources, avoiding product misuse, seeking information on products before buying them, using their buying power intelligently by patronizing quality goods and services while boycotting fake ones.

Consumer advocates in Ghana have often made the mistake of thinking that knowledge of consumer rights and the enactment of consumer protection laws will provide a safe haven for Ghanaian consumers. In every country in the world, even in the absence of a consolidated Consumer Protection Law, various statutes in the various sectors of the economy already contain provisions that are meant to protect the interests of consumers and it is the lack of legal enforcement that has been the bane of the system. Some of these laws and regulations are the mandates of various regulatory agencies in the country that are responsible for their enforcement and there are consumer protection provisions in all of them. Prioritizing consumer protection within their mandate has been the growing concern of Ghanaian consumers as they find very little being done in this area. Most Ghanaian consumers question in whose interest some of these government regulatory agencies are working as they believe that these government agencies are more protective of businesses within their jurisdiction than protecting consumers. This is buttressed by the fact that government regulatory agencies have not got sub-offices in the central business districts and other major markets where most consumer problems persist and are more prominent than their present head offices that are unreachable to most Ghanaian consumers.

Even in those countries where there is an enacted Consumer Protection Law, consumers cannot profess to know its content in totality. However, just like knowing there is a Police Force that looks out for the violation of criminal laws that we may not even be aware of, citizens still have the responsibility of protecting themselves from crime by learning to lock up their property, keeping their homes insured, staying away from infringing on other people’s freedoms and learning which of their own actions constitute civil wrongs and criminal violations, etc.

Even with the presence of consumer protection organizations, consumers, thus, have a responsibility of learning to read labels of products to check the ingredients, date of expiry, etc since no organization or law will do so for them at the point of purchase. Similarly, consumers are to read and understand contracts there are given to sign before appending their signatures.

For more information, contact:
The Consumer Partnership-Ghana [The COP]
KDPM 28
Kanda-Accra

Email: jytlukaz-AT-gmail.com, theconsumerpartnership-AT-gmail.com

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PURCing the Ghanaian Consumer- A Comedy of Public Utilities

Jean Lukaz MIH, The Consumer Partnership-Ghana

Pronouncing verdicts may be an easy task for the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), but PURCing the Ghanaian Consumer with oversize tariffs and with very little expectations other than promises from the monopolies of an electricity cartel and an Aqua-something-Vitens is not amusing.

Concocted Households?
By way of what is believed to be a ‘social tariff’ or government subsidy we are being made to believe that poorer consumers are protected. As if by design the average Ghanaian household since creation consumes within the 0-50 bracket, popularly referred to as the "lifeline" as well as rural consumers who hardly have electricity and worst of all have their meters physically removed by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) for their inability to pay for their ‘lifelines’, the PURC may be the first to relieve itself of erratic and unsatisfactory utility supplies. Let’s see if the PURC on its new premises can afford and survive on pre-paid meters with their queuing subventions from a Government that constantly has over-outstanding and overdue utility bills that encourage utility service providers to underperform.

Monopolies versus Rights to Basic Needs and to Choice
The consumer right to satisfaction of basic needs includes the right to water and electricity. The first priority of all governments should be to make safe, affordable drinking and wastewater services as well as electricity available to all consumers and subsidies should be concentrated on poor consumers. The Consumer Partnership (The COP) believes that being monopolies for the sake of social good have created comfort zones for utility providers, thereby enabling them to muffle Ghanaian consumers from their right to choice. Unconscionable in their nature and existence by not warranting Ghanaian consumers an alternative other than the devil and the deep blue sea, we can only have to look over the fence to see one of the biggest oil suppliers with one of the highest per capita generator use in the world, a signature of unguaranteed promises and false expectations. Who owns what may not be the pre-eminent issue, but consumer protection is. This should be the guiding principle behind the regulation of utilities.

Price
Price controls should continue as long as public utility providers remain monopolistic. Price controls should take into account profit levels and rate of return on capital. The rate of return should be little more than is necessary for an industry to attract the necessary capital for investment. Increases in prices should be mitigated by reductions in non-payment and waste. Raising the proportion of consumers, both industrial and domestic, who pay their bills, would result in significant increases in revenue and reduce the pressure to raise tariffs. It would also be fairer than raising tariffs while significant numbers of consumers continue to avoid payment.

Coverage
The dilemma of who bears the investment cost of infrastructure extension is rendered less acute by efficiency gains. It is important to understand what costs are included in determining tariffs, and whether cost alone is the sole determinant of price. It is also important to understand the relationship between the price consumers pay and the true cost of running the utility as loading the cost onto present or new consumers can create unfair burdens. An important issue arises here as Ghanaian consumers believe they are bearing the cost of the inefficiency of utility service providers. The utility may also find it difficult to keep prices down if some large consumers, for instance government offices, do not pay their bills as is the case in Ghana.

False Expectations
Hoping to milk Ghanaian consumers in the short run to acquire some equipment of a kind may sound persuasive to gullible consumers whilst offering clear timelines for delivery of a purported improved service may be verboten and belated. For those that are asking Ghanaian consumers to consult President Obama for a dose of ‘Audacity of Hope’ from some West African Gas pipelines that have been overflowing with hot air, and a justification from a Jubilee anniversary platform that is yet to see the light of day, should rather consult their horoscope to see better times next year.

Big Ears, Small Voice
Safarying the country and PURCing the Ghanaian consumer in the guise of public hearings for what seemed to work in the interest of utility service providers, the mockumentary of ‘A Comedy of Public Utilities’ has finally been rolled out and PURC is definitely having a laugh as they can only hear themselves. Consumer Education (CE) roundtables have been elevated to high tables in star-rated hotel conference rooms where all classes of consumers, including rural utility consumers, play Ghostbusters. In fact, Ghanaian consumers hate rating the credibility of PURC, so please do not ask.

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www.theconsumerpartnership.wordpress.com

Consumers represent Ghana at Global Social Responsibility Confab

Copenhagen, May 18, 2010. The Consumer Partnership-Ghana- Proceedings of the 8th Plenary of the evolving International Guidance Standard on Social Responsibility (SR), ISO 26000, opened on Monday 15th May in Copenhagen with Ghana represented by Jean Lukaz, a consumer representative from The Consumer Partnership-Ghana. Ghana’s participation was facilitated by the Ghana Standards Board (GSB), which is the official representative of Ghana at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and ISO.

In January 2005, a Working Group was established within ISO, to develop an International Standard providing guidelines for Social Responsibility (SR). The objective was to produce a guidance document, written in plain language that is understandable and usable by non-specialists, and not a specification document intended for third party certification.

Relating the ISO 26000 guidance standard to the Ghana Business code Mr Lukaz commented that ISO 26000 covers more ground including consumer issues than the Ghana Business code, which is based in its entirety on the UN Global Compact.
Social responsibility has been dealt with extensively in the document to cover the seven core subjects of organizational governance, human rights, labour practices, the environment, fair operating practices, consumer issues, and community involvement and development.

Speaking on the relevance of the development of the guidance standard on SR, Jean Lukaz said, ‘the final document is intended to add value to, and not replace, existing inter-governmental agreements with relevance to social responsibility, such as the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and those adopted by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and that the standard should be usable for organizations of all sizes, in countries at every stage of development.’

He added that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has grown beyond traditional corporate philanthropy and sponsorships, and that it is about time industry in Ghana developed a strategic and integrated approach to CSR. Mr Lukaz emphasized that it would be more relevant for Ghana Club 100 to be using reporting on [C]SR in company annual reports as a criteria for selection.

At GSB a National Mirror Committee was formed comprising 6 key stakeholders from industry, government, labour, consumers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and service, support, research and others (SSRO) as required by ISO.

According to Jean Lukaz, Ghana’s participation in the final stage of the development of the guidance standard on Social Responsibility demonstrates the country’s commitment to creating an enabling business environment where not only the businesses are required to act responsibly but also consumers, communities, labour, civil society and government.

ISO 26000 will provide harmonized, globally relevant guidance based on international consensus among expert representatives of the main stakeholder groups and so encourage the implementation of social responsibility worldwide. The guidance in ISO 26000 draws on best practice developed by existing public and private sector SR initiatives and is intended to be useful to organizations large and small in both these sectors.

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Stop Confusing Ghanaian Consumers!

Consumer alerts issued recently by the Food and Drugs Board (FDB) in respect of some identified fake medicines in the marketplace has been deemed inappropriate and confusing by the Consumer Partnership (The COP), a consumer protection organization in Ghana.

With the majority of Ghanaian consumers being illiterate and the literate folks not savvy enough to read the labels on products and moreso expiry dates and batch codes, the FDB alert on March 12, 2010, cited the names of the products as Cipro-Dor (Ciprofloxacin Hydrochloride) and Clavu-Dor (Amoxicilin 500mg and Cluvulanic Acid 125mg) the name of the manufacturers. There were no images of the products empahsizing the details Ghanaian consumers should be looking out for when purchasing such products. Worst of all, mobile phone numbers were cited as hotlines.

Four days later, on March 16, 2010, the FDB comes out to clarify the previous alert that it was only related to a particular batch and not the entire range of the mentioned brands believing in the assumption that Ghanaian consumers understand batch coding. The Pharmacy Council has an obligation of rather alerting their members on pulling off the fake drugs off their shelves so they do not reach the hands of poor Ghanaian consumers who trust that pharmacists will only sell them wholesome medicines.

The work of regulatory agencies such as that of the FDB require huge budgets for Consumer Education (CE) and Product Alerts and government must take cognisance of this when approving their budgets.
The Consumer Partnership believes that consumer alerts of such nature should be accompanied by full colour photographs of the products in question on the front pages of national newspapers. It is an apology to have regulatory agencies such as the FDB to put out such alerts and cite expensive mobile phone numbers as hotlines instead of toll-free numbers and set up control points in the marketplace. The pharmacy council must have a self-regulatory mechanism for following up on such alerts.

In a related development, when the Ghana Standards Board (GSB) issued an alert on Tuesday, October 27 2009, on the presence of some brands of tomato paste on the Ghanaian market which contain starch and sugar but are branded as ‘Pure Tomato Paste’ in contravention to the GSB Standard for Tomato Paste, there ensued a week-long rebuttal by FDB and an institutional debate between the FDB and GSB on their mandates instead of embarking on consumer education regarding the brands on the market that were unsafe or did not meet the GSB Standard.

According to Jean Lukaz, a Consumer Advocate, consumers in Ghana are being taken for granted by the very institutions that have the mandate to protect them from unscrupulous business people in the marketplace. This, he said, is the result of very little, ineffective, misguided or no consumer education being carried out by these institutions. When consumer forums are organised by some of these institutions, they are elitist in nature and do not give the ordinary poor consumer a voice given the duration, atmosphere, language and location restrictions, he added.

Ghana Celebrates World Consumer Rights Day 2010

Consumer Protection is Government’s Duty!

Government has been urged to meet its obligations in the area of consumer protection both as a constitutional mandate and as required by UN guidelines on consumer protection for governments around the world. This statement was made by Jean Lukaz, Executive Director of the Consumer Partnership-Ghana and ISO Expert Trainer on Consumer Participation in Standardization, during a seminar held to mark World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD) 2010, which was hosted by the Ghana Standards Board (GSB) as part of its efforts at supporting consumer protection activities.

‘Ghanaian consumers must make a conscious effort at changing the culture of silence to adopt a culture of complaints’, he said. This enables businesses, government regulatory agencies and consumer protection organizations to respond effectively to rid out shoddy goods and services and thereby protect their rights, he added.

In his presentation, Mr Lukaz highlighted the fact that not only must consumers exercise their rights but also they should be aware of their responsibilities and the impact of their behaviour on business and government. He added that responsibilities always precede rights and that if Ghanaian consumers want their rights recognised, they must first exercise their responsibilities.

In an attempt to define consumer protection, he said Consumer Protection, thus, can be defined as:

‘the responsible ethical behaviour of consumers, producers or service providers in the respective buying and selling of goods or services and the effective control of the marketplace by the government through the enforcement of laws and regulations, the promotion of standards and the dissemination of consumer education.’ (The Consumer Partnership, 2009)

The best consumer protection is self-protection and consumers require consumer education to protect themselves in the market place. However, most consumer education efforts by governmernt agencies are ineffective because they are in English only and targeted at the literate population who read some key newspapers. This leaves about half the population uninformed and uneducated, he concluded.

Speaking on the theme for this year’s WCRD 2010 ‘Our money, Our rights’ as proposed by Consumers International, Mr Lukaz made reference to the fact that 80 percent of Ghanaians are financially illiterate and this amazingly includes educated folk. He urged that the Financial Services sector must adhere to codes outlined by the Partnership for Making Finance Work for Africa (MFW4A) and the UN Blue Book on Building Inclusive Financial Sectors for Development.

Jean Lukaz criticised the Consumer Movement in Ghana for not being established at grassroot level which has resulted in low levels of impatience and ‘demo-crazyness’. There seems to be more on advocacy than activism but cautioned that the Consumer Movement must desist from statements and activities that will create the perception that it is ‘anti-business’.

Also present were Consumer Protection Agency CEO, Mr Kofi Kapito, who led a discussion on the Ghanaian and quality consciousness and Mr Ken Appenteng of SPEED, who delivered a presentation on financial literacy in Ghana. Representatives from Consumer Focus, Lecturers and students from the University of Ghana Health Science Department were in attendance as well as members of the Public.

The Ghana Standards Board has been supporting consumer protection in Ghana as part of their international mandate from membership to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) by encouraging consumer participation in standardization through the nomination of Consumer Representatives unto various Technical Committees and the participation of Consumer Organizations in ISO/COPOLCO (Consumer Policy Committee) activities. According to Mrs Adetola, Director of Standards, Jean Lukaz, a consumer representative on a Technical Committee, has been nominated to represent Ghana at the next ISO/COPOLCO Global Workshop on Social Responsibility in Copenhagen, Denmark from 15-21 May 2010.

Mrs Diana Amponsah further explained the activies of COPOLCO and how consumers participate in their activities in a presentation.

The Consumer Partnership-Ghana is advocating for access to stable, secure and fair financial services, which is important for consumers everywhere, not least in the context of the global financial crisis. Government policy makers have a duty to increase consumer information ( ‘truth in lending’ for example), invest in financial literacy initiatives (i.e., consumer education), insist that the retail financial industry take steps to protect consumers (self-regulatory codes of conduct, for example) and encourage the development of an independent regulatory oversight body responsible for monitoring, reviewing and taking complaints.

In a move to protecting Ghanaian consumers in Financial Services, the Bank of Ghana has established a new Investigation and Consumer Reporting Office (ICRO) within the Banking Supervision Department (BSD) as the financial industry watchdog office of the Bank of Ghana (BOG), with responsibility for protecting consumers of financial products/services and educating them on their rights and responsibilities. While this effort is laudable, the Consumer Partnership believes that government should be moving more towards state sponsorship of regulation instead of state provision since this prevents duplication of mandates as is the case of this new ICRO within the Bank of Ghana that is working with the same mission, laws and regulations.

Ghana to host conference on consumer protection in Africa

Ghana is to host an international conference on consumer protection in Africa, coming September 8-9, 2009 in Accra.

More than 250 policy makers, regulators, journalists and representatives from financial institutions and their apex organizations, the education sector, consumer protection agencies, and development partners from over 30 countries will participate in the conference.

The conference would be hosted in collaboration with the Partnership for Making Finance Work for Africa (MFW4A) on the theme “Promoting Financial Capability and Consumer Protection – A step forward towards financial inclusion in Africa.”

A statement from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning issued in Accra on Thursday, quoted Dr Kwabena Duffuor, Minister of Finance and Economic Planning saying "Promoting financial capability is about raising awareness, promoting knowledge, building trust, and changing behaviour.”

“And it is not limited to educating consumers and enabling them to take informed decisions on savings, loan and investment products”, he added.

According to him, management and staff of financial institutions need to be trained to become more responsive to the needs of their clients, and supervisors need the capacity to protect consumers against fraud and other bad business practices.

The conference is being organized against the background that low-income households in Africa often have limited access to demand-oriented and affordable financial services.

They include savings, loans, and insurance, which means they have to revert to more expensive and less secure traditional alternatives of saving and borrowing and remain vulnerable to adverse shocks.

Research has shown that in order to strengthen financial institutions in Africa, there is the need to promote financial capability, to empower people to be capable of managing their financial assets and liabilities and to better understand their rights and responsibilities vis-à-vis financial institutions.

However, strengthening the financial capability of the population is not sufficient since governments also have a role to play in protecting consumers by ensuring that financial institutions apply recognized standards and suitable codes of conducts.

In order to create sustainable ‘win-win situations’ in this long-run, it is believed that financial capability measures need to go hand in hand with responsible, transparent and reliable services provided by financial institutions.

In moderated regional and national working groups, participants will have the chance to develop ideas and proposals as to what they think should be done in their country or region to improve financial capability.

A panel on social marketing will show films and discuss which marketing channels can be used best to address the different target groups of financial capability campaigns.

The Government of Ghana, together with the Ghana Microfinance Institutions Network (GHAMFIN), will hold as a prelude to the conference, a day’s Pre-Conference on “Promoting Financial Capability and Consumer Protection in Ghana” on September 7, 2009.

According to Mr Seth Terkper, Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, “Financial capability is very high on the political agenda of the Government.”

He said “Ghana is one of the first countries in Africa that have developed and started to implement a National Strategy for Financial Literacy and Consumer Protection in the Microfinance Sector”.

Over the past two years, “financial literacy road shows” have been carried out in all 10 regions of Ghana, easy-to-understand educational materials have been developed and distributed, high school quizzes have been organized, and radio programs on saving and responsible borrowing as well as television sitcoms on insurance have been telecast.

All activities will culminate at the Ghana Financial Literacy Week, which will take place from 28 September 28 to October 3, 2009.

Against this background, over 150 Ghanaian and international financial sector champions from the public sector and the financial sector as well as representatives from academia, consumer protection agencies, non-governmental organizations and development partners will discuss and evaluate whether “Ghana is on track and set the right priorities in financial capability and consumer protection”.

Additionally, innovative topics such as “Integrating Financial Capability into High Schools” and “Promoting Financial Capability through Mass Media” will be addressed.


Source: GNA

Global consumer movement sets out conditions for a new financial order

· Consumer education not enough, protection is vital

· Measures to restrict emerging monopolies needed

· Ringfence retail banking to protect consumer deposits

· No bailouts without essential services investment obligations

Consumers International (CI), the global federation of consumer organisations, today set out its solutions to the financial fix calling for effective, affirmative, preventative consumer protection as an essential foundation for moving beyond the economic crisis.

Following worldwide consultation with its membership, CI is submitting its position to the UN Conference on the World Financial Crisis, 24-26 June. This follows ongoing contributions to the UN’s Stiglitz Committee and the OECD.

Joost Martens, Director General of Consumers International, stated that “While CI research has shown most consumers manage their finances responsibly, they have been unfairly blamed by governments, media and industry for creating this crisis through irresponsible borrowing, and then prolonging it through insufficient spending. It is high time the so-called experts start listening to consumers, rather than blaming them for the mess the bankers and governments have created.”

In mapping out the consumer movement’s call for a new financial order, CI argues that the financial crisis began with a failure to protect consumers from bad loans in the US and other mortgage markets. A viable fix for the global economy must include greater regulatory oversight of a far more transparent banking industry.

However, whilst transparency is important, more information for consumers is not enough. The system is simply too complex at present and needs regulatory intervention to remove incomprehensible financial products and services.

Robin Simpson, Senior Policy Advisor at Consumers International, has hinted that “Consumer education is a right, but avoiding financial ruin in the current climate takes more than access to information. No doubt the clients of Bernie Madoff thought their money was in good hands, but the billions he embezzled shows we are all susceptible to the faults in the financial system. Better law, as well as better understanding, is needed”.

The meltdown of the financial industry has also led to bank mergers being hurried through by competition authorities. CI is gravely concerned that the banking monopolies emerging from this crisis pose a danger to consumer choice and protection. We therefore call for strict monitoring and reporting requirements to be established to ensure the new financial services landscape works for the consumer.

There must also be a clear distinction between retail and investment banking activities. Only then can consumer deposits be protected from the irresponsible behaviour and risky speculation of the investment bankers.

CI is also concerned that the current seizure of bank activity is denying millions of poor consumers access to basic bank account services and starving critical public utility developments of investment. This is of particular concern in the developing world where the flow of funds is a vital means of achieving improved consumer access to electricity, water, sanitation and financial services.

CI is therefore demanding that taxpayer bailouts come with mandatory obligations to provide basic consumer banking services and investment in major social infrastructure projects.

According to Robin Simpson “The banking sector has elbowed its way to the front of the public expenditure queue as a result of the threat of collapse, effectively holding a gun to the head of government. They cannot simply swallow taxpayer money and carry on as before; firm commitments to provide for basic consumer needs and services must accompany these bailouts. ”

For more on CI’s work in this area, visit www.consumersinternational.org/financialcrisis

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.

Consumer Protection: A Panacea For Shoddy Goods & Services?

by Jean Lukaz

Pundits in Ghana have always pointed fingers at the ineffectiveness of consumer protection associations in the country in the face of the proliferation of shoddy goods and services. Why consumers are thinking along these lines are a wonder. It is as if consumer protection will get into factories and offices and literally rid the country of this menace.  On the other hand, consumer activism stimulates the market to provide products, processes and services that are better and safer.

Hard or Soft Power?

Consumer protection is not about hard power, the use of physical force. It is rather on the contrary. It is about soft power: dialogue, persuasion, understanding, and joint action by consumers, producers and the government. Hard consumer power rather alienates consumers and consumer activists from the government and producers of goods and services. It is in this light that some people feel that lawyers are probably the best activists when it comes to consumer protection but let’s get this right: is consumer protection about litigation and legal threats? Consumers are generally assumed to be laymen, otherwise irrational in their thinking when they are uninformed. The aim of consumer protection is to present safe products and services in plain lay universal language that is understandable by all so that consumers will put products and services to the right use for which they were purposed.

The Weapon

Consumers are not specialists but in consumption. And the only adverse way consumers react is by way of complaints and boycott. An influx of complaints on a particular product or service is an alarm bell and a call to action. Action is not necessarily litigation, which rather ends up antagonising producers of goods and services. Action is about alerting the producer who may not even be aware of the impact of their products on consumers. Complaints, by way of feedback, arm consumers with the reason to proceed to the next level in case of inaction on the part of producers. When consumer complaints are met with arrogance and denials, industry associations are the next places to visit with the complaints. Consumers may collectively channel their complaints through a consumer protection association or other and request for feedback on the action that will be taken by the industry association within a specified timeframe. Where the industry association compromises or is ineffective, the regulator of the industry is the next point of call and consumers may well put their complaints and grievances in writing even after verbally doing so. One would ask about what to do if the regulator fails to act…in that case there is something definitely wrong with the whole process of consumer complaints management process in the industry or country. This requires a microscopic examination of the structures that have been established to give consumers their value for money. The lawsuit is the last resort if you have the money to bring commercial giants into the courtroom. It may not be worth your complaint to sue unless it is intended to generate negative publicity for the producer in order to sensitise the public about their insensitivity.

The Practicals

To put the above into practice, if you are aggrieved for buying a faulty new automobile and the seller or distributor refuses to repair or replace it, you just make sure you put your complaint or grievance into writing and copy it to a consumer protection association such as The Consumer Partnership (THE-COP). The next step is to send another letter on how you have been treated unfairly by the distributor and what action you request to the Automobile Distributors Association (if there is any), attaching a copy of your previous letter to the distributor. Make sure a copy of this letter is also sent to the consumer protection association that received your first letter (this will help them to monitor and fight on your behalf where the occasion arises). If the industry association in question compromises or does not act on your complaint after the timeframe you requested expires (unless they reply to explain) you then proceed to the regulator of the automobile industry in Ghana: I’m not sure who does…Where there is no regulator or a national consumer ombudsman, the Ministry of Trade in this case may be the next point of contact with your new complaint letter detailing the various actions you have taken that have not received any attention and what action you are requesting. Remember to copy this final letter to your correspondent consumer protection association and attach copies of all correspondence to the Ministry of Trade including relevant receipts and contracts (do not send original copies). If the Ministry fails to respond without explanation within a timeframe it is time to talk to some litigant lawyers. In Ghana the Centre for Public Interest Law (CEPIL) may be of help. They may however take a commission from your claim for their effort even if you do not pay any fees initially. Remember the media at this stage but consult the consumer protection association first as they may give your story the right twist. Other consumers will definitely need to share your experience with such an arrogant distributor so they may not fall victim to their wiles.

To Be or Not to Be?

The question under review here is: Does consumer protection bring sanity into a system? The answer may be a yes and no depending on where you are coming from. If you are coming from the USA, where industry regulation is quite effective, then Ralph Nader has already done most of the work so the answer may be a yes. If you are fortunate to come from Ghana, where regulation of industry is rather ineffective, the answer is a big NO! Consumer protection is just one of the answers and its effectiveness is dependent on a number of factors.

Competition, regulation and standards all go hand in hand in giving consumer protection a boost.

Competition forces otherwise producers of shoddy goods and services to put their best before consumers in order to win a market share. Competition, in the face of the market forces of demand and supply, keeps the best actors in business whilst phasing out the bad and ugly. Lack of competition gives consumers no alternatives to substitute shoddy goods and services for as a monopolistic environment may not be a fertile ground for consumer protection fundamentalism.

Regulation outlines legal norms for those in industry and is bound by law that is mandatorily enforced. The contents of regulations are usually a prerequisite for entry into the industry and pre-establish conformity. However, poor regulation is an epitome of a porous enforcement mechanism and corrupted enforcement agents. In a system where there is virtually no enforcement, there is usually a lack of consumer confidence and consumers may resign to their fate. Consumers in such a system will not formally complain as it ridicules them and makes a mockery of the process and will, thus, become apathetic to the activities of consumer protection associations. Complaints are then replaced with word of mouth moaning to friends and relatives. 

Standards when mandatory are part of regulation and provide an automatic platform for consumer satisfaction. Standards are ‘…rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities or their results, aimed at the achievement of the optimum degree of order in a given context’ (ISO/IEC Guide 2). Standards may also be voluntary whereby members of a body establish a code of conduct to guide their operations. Recognition may be in the form of the use of a well-recognised quality mark or trustmark. Companies and individuals use and adhere to standards voluntarily, or because they are required to by law. When compliance with a standard is not mandated by law, companies and individuals follow the terms of the standards simply because it is in their interest to do so — standards improve the quality of products, processes or services, reassure customers and open up markets. The terms of standards may also be incorporated into government statutes and regulations, in which case companies and individuals must follow them as a matter of law. In some cases, governments initiate and participate in standards development so the standard can be included in legislation. In other cases, governments find that an existing standard can be used to deal with a public policy problem and include it in new legislation.

Complaints, in the face of standards, are also endemic in an environment characterised by corruption, non-conformity and non-enforcement of standards. Consumers, acting rationally, would want the best products and services at the least cost that is readily available. Thus, consumers would look out for certain elements that have been traditionally infused into standards such as health and safety, fitness for purpose (performance), product information and labelling, environmental protection, fair pricing, interoperability (ability of a product to be used in different countries and within a product range) and systems of redress. However, oblivious to the prevalence of shoddy goods and services, consumers may also presume that all products and services on offer are safe for their use- a danger to their health and safety.

So if you find yourself in a country where competition is virtually non-existent, regulation lacks enforcement and where standards are not really working, the only way forward is consumer participation in standardization. When consumers are represented in the standards-making process, their views are taken into account and it subsequently forms an automatic basis for consumer satisfactions albeit this will still require a stringent enforcement mechanism to be manifest.

Consumer participation is also beneficial for manufacturers, because goods and services that adopt standards developed with consumer participation may be more easily accepted in the marketplace.

 

Published in Public Agenda on 11th December, 2006: www.ghanaweb.com/public_agenda

http://www.theconsumerpartnership.org