What’s the use of these Consumer Protection presences?

Mar 18, 2023 Letters

Dear Editor,

I must say I am very surprised to come across a news item about ‘The Competition Commission of Guyana’ that was established under the Competition and Fair Trading Act (CFTA) of 2006. As a result of that, the Consumer Affairs Act comes into existence and the Competition and Consumer Affairs Commission was formed.

From what I gather, the body’s main purpose is to assist consumers in making proper purchase and investigation complaints for a solution. Interestingly, I’ve been writing of consumer’s plights for quite a number of years and never heard of them. I decided to check their website and to my dismay, they have a website and it’s not complete, with only four posts. Clicking on one of the posts to read more, a page pops up, informing you that the site is undergoing work. For such an important organization that is in existence since 2006, and with only four posts that are not fully accessible, and reading that they’ve only deal with roughly 120 complaints made me come to question their existence, who’s funding them and if it’s feasible to continue.

Editor, consumers continue to be tormented daily with expired products, wrong weights, overpriced, inferior products etc., and despite various complaints via the media, I’ve never heard of the CCAC’S existence, and whilst there are other bodies with similar responsibilities, they only appear conveniently.  What I notice with the CCAC is that their focus seems to be more on the purchase of vehicles.  Because of me interacting around, I know for a fact that even though government passes an order to remove inferior electrical products from the shelves, they are still available, especially in the Chinese stores. Construction and electrical materials for houses increase tremendously and no valid reason was given for such act, but the bodies remain silent.

There are many contractors going around, doing shoddy work and no system is in place to get compensation for the owners. So, is it feasible for these bodies to be in existence when they not performing their duties they are supposed to?

Yours faithfully,

Sahadeo Bates

• Competition and Fair Trading Act (CFTA), Consumer, Consumer Affairs Act, presences, Protection, Sahadeo Bates