Consumer body cries for 'teeth'

Consumer body cries for 'teeth'
By Joan Chirwa
Wednesday March 19, 2008 [03:00]

ZAMBIA Competition Commission (ZCC) has been inactive in enforcing existing laws due to the absence of punitive measures against offenders, commission director for consumer welfare and education Chilufya Sampa has said. In an interview, Sampa said the major problem that the competition commission has had in terms of enforcing consumer laws was the non-existence of punitive measures, as the current court process was time-consuming and costly on the part of the commission and consumers.

“If we need to take someone to task, we have to go through the courts but that is not effective. We have used advocacy instead and we have not taken anyone to court over the last 10 years,” Sampa said. “We have come to realise that this is a weakness on the part of the competition commission for not being able to take people to task over various complaints that we receive from consumers around the country.”

Sampa noted the need for the amendment of the Consumer and Fair Trading Act for it to be more effective in terms of enforcement of the laws.

“The current court processes take so long, so this is why we have just been using advocacy methods in dealing with complaints on products from the consumer. This method is however not the best, but it is quicker compared the court process,” Sampa said. “Because of the absence of punitive measures, we have a number of companies coming out in consumer complaints every now and then. We are now even thinking of just taking some of these companies to court even if the process takes long and is an expensive venture.”

The competition commission last year handled a total of 62 consumer cases on misleading information, deceptive products and foreign particles in foodstuffs, among others.