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| Dr Annan in an interaction with Ms Adetola (left) and an ISO official, Robin Simpson (middle) |
PARTICIPANTS at a workshop to commemorate World Consumer Rights Day have called on the government to facilitate the promulgation of the consumer protection bill into an act.
According to them, the unavailability of the law has deprived consumers the right to safety, reliability and redress.
The commemoration was meant to provide an opportunity to promote the basic rights of all consumers and request for those rights to be respected and protected.
The workshop, put together by the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA), in association with the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and the Ministry of Trade and Industry, was on the theme, “Our money, our rights: Campaigning for real choice in financial services”.
It also sought to increase participants' understanding of what standards are and the importance of standards in the lives of consumers.
Opening the workshop, the Deputy Minister of Trade, Dr Joseph S. Annan, said the government was looking beyond the consumer act to ensure that institutions were in place for its implementation.
In line with that, he said the ministry had put in place a trade sector support programme to aid the existing protection policy that would bring about greater awareness of consumer information.
“The government is, therefore, committed to facilitating the strengthening of the linkage between the GSA and industry associations in the development of standards and initiatives that will improve institutional capacities in the interest of the consumer,” he reiterated.
He also announced the government’s decision to take a look at the issue of empowering the GSA to enforce laws on consumer protection.
Dr Annan explained that the delay in the passage of the act had to do with the multi-stakeholder approach where the consumer, manufacturers, non-governmental and advocacy organisations, as well as the government, had critically examined issues on redress and reliability which were key to the consumer.
The Head of the Consumer Advocacy Centre, Dr Goski Alabi, who presented a paper on the thematic area, expressed regret that there were no systematic approaches to educating consumers on the financial contracts they made.
According to her, since consumer protection was a process that took standards, laws and organisations to safeguard consumers, there was the need to make available the necessary legislation that would adequately take care of those provisions.
She also advocated the rethinking of issues on standards development, demands and concepts of standardisation, with new approaches in place to make sure that consumer needs and requirements were satisfied.
Earlier in her welcoming address, the acting Deputy Executive Director in charge of Core Services at the GSA, Ms Elizabeth Adetola, had said the involvement of consumers in standardisation was appropriate because of the important role they played as the end users.
The immediate past President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), Mr Tony Oteng-Gyasi, who chaired the programme, appealed to consumer protection associations to consider the publication of consumer guides as a way of raising funds to support their activities.
He expressed the hope that the government would act on the recommendations from the workshop towards addressing the deficit in consumer protection.
SOURCE: Della Russel Ocloo, Daily Graphic, Fri March 16, 2012
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