adminFungai Lupande
Mashonaland Central Bureau
Consumers continue to be exploited and short-changed from expired unused mobile data, poor quality mobile phone networks, counterfeit and substandard goods, and unjustified price hikes, and these are some of the areas the Consumer Protection Commission is looking into.
To this end, the commission has now gone full throttle meeting its stakeholders to craft regulations which will give effect to the Consumer Protection Act, with one such engagement taking place at a workshop in Mashonaland Province.
This follows the post Cabinet briefing on May 16 this year which mandated the Commission to act and mitigate unfair trading in the market, as part of the wide range of measures to tame the present price rises and extreme profiteering.
The regulations will see enforcement of the law to protect exploitation of consumers.
Before the commission of the State body, there was a Consumer Council of Zimbabwe, a voluntary organisation not empowered by the law and only able to act as a pressure group.
To give consumer protection legal teeth, a Consumer Protection Bill was brought to Parliament in 2019 with the final version approved by President Mnangagwa in October 2020 and so enacted into law.
The following year the commissioners were appointed and early this year, the secretariat was set up to put the Act in motion.
Chairperson of the commission, Mr Mthokozisi Nkosi, said they were seeking the most effective ways of protecting the “ever vulnerable consumers”.
“We need teeth to bite,” he said. “We have waited long for this overdue moment to arrive because we are living in a jungle, a time of many changes characterised by chaos and unpredictability where the consumer is the daily prey of choice.
“On a daily basis, our consumers are subjected to abuse in the form of rampant price hikes, and misleading and deceptive promotional campaigns.
“Consumers are also being supplied with defective goods, poor service delivery and deteriorating quality of service, and use of false measures in supplying poor-quality services.”
Mr Nkosi said consumers were short-changed in expired unused data due to network challenges and poor quality networks for mobile phones, among several issues.
“The workshop seeks to transform the way we operate by interrogating the appropriateness of the current consumer protection configuration,” he said.
“Under one roof here today, we have sector regulators, consumer protection organisations, business representatives, sectoral associations, consumer advocacy groups working together to put in place robust, effective and efficient consumer protection regulations.”
Mr Nkosi said the workshop would enlighten and advise players in the consumer protection industry of their strategic position, role, work space and boundaries to avoid unnecessary channel conflict and duplication of effort.
The ultimate goal is to protect the consumer through the collaborative, networking and complementary efforts from each one of the players, he said.
“A new culture centred on consumer-centricity is required for business and industry growth that is necessary for economic development in line with the Government of Zimbabwe National Development Strategy 1,” he said.
“Confident consumers are one of the important drivers of industry competitiveness by demanding competitive prices, improved product quality and better service.
“Consumers provide an impetus for innovation and enhanced performance by business. This is an important ingredient to the attainment of the 2030 upper middle-income economy as pronounced by His Excellency President Mnangagwa.”
Officially opening the workshop, the Permanent Secretary for Industry and Commerce Dr Mavis Sibanda said the Consumer Protection Act dovetails with the country’s aspirations and vision of a prosperous and empowered upper middle-income society by 2023.
She was represented by acting director commerce and consumer affairs Mrs Petronela Masunda.”The Act is very critical because all those unfair business practices that were previously unregulated are now governed by the Act,” she said. “The bulk of the Act speaks to consumer rights, which businesses are duty-bound to ensure that they are aware of and uphold.
“Therefore, every supplier will have to evaluate whether their business practices comply with the Act and make the necessary changes.”
Mrs Masunda urged the Consumer Protection Commission to collaborate with other sector regulators and stakeholders in ensuring that consumer rights are not being violated across all sectors of the economy.
She called for increased awareness programmes to all corners of the country in order to ensure that consumers were well informed of their rights as enshrined in the Act.
“This is in line with the Government thrust of ‘leaving no one and no place behind’. The Ministry is currently working on the development of the Consumer Protection Policy and a draft document is already in place,” she said.
“The development of this policy is meant to further augment the current legislation on consumer protection in the country.”
A national quality policy was in place to ensure that goods and services produced locally complied with stated and intended quality requirements.
To date, over 2,5 million substandard products have been denied entry into the country under the Consignment Based Conformity Programme.
Dr Sibanda said four CBCA service providers had been recruited to conduct pre-shipment and destination inspections of particular goods being imported into the country
The aim is to protect the consumer from cheap counterfeit imports.
“Work closely with the Trade Measures Department in the Ministry as they carry out their mandate of verifying measuring instruments used for trade and inspection on products and articles for sale in line with the Trade Measures Act,” she said.
“Robust consumer protection laws are a critical cog in the country’s development agenda. We therefore need to strike a balance between development and protecting the interest of consumers.”
Speaking at the same workshop, secretary in the legal and corporate services for the Competition and Tariff Commission, Mr Jonathan Dube, said they regulate economic competition across all sectors.
“That commision has the mandate to ensure that consumers benefit from authorities established to protect them,” he said. “Our wish is that when these regulations are being crafted they complement the existing Acts and policies including the Competition Act which has the consumers in mind.
“This ensures that consumers are not exploited by those who are into cataclysm and abuse their monopoly. Our emphasis is more on companies on the commercial scale and sometimes consumers might not feel our effect.
“However, the Consumer Protection Commission deals directly with the consumer cartels. Currently, the prices are running away and this has serious effects on consumers whose disposable income is eroded.
“It is my hope that the regulations will address some of these issues due to the lack of law that deals with such issues.”
Online Reporter