World Consumer Rights Day: Sindh to have consumer courts in six to eight months

Meeting with chief minister on the issue will be held in a few days

KARACHI: Business rules must be framed and consumer courts should be established in an effort to ensure protection of consumers, remarked former adviser to the Sindh chief minister Sharmila Farooqi on Thursday.

Speaking at a seminar on the World Consumer Rights Day, organised by the Helpline Trust, she disclosed that a meeting with the chief minister to discuss the establishment of consumer protection courts was due in a few days.

Farooqi said the government had enough resources to establish the Consumer Protection Council. However, it was a tedious process as certain procedural issues like financial analysis, allocation of funds, appointment of judges and staff, acquisition of land and construction work were to be addressed, she added.

She said currently there were 11 consumer courts in Punjab and 15 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, but the establishment of such courts would take time. She assured the audience that Sindh would have its own consumer courts in the next six to eight months.

Talking about securing the digital space, she said, “Mostly what we see on these websites is not what we get. There is discrepancy in terms of colour and texture of the products.”

But there were some online platforms that offered a goods return policy to their consumers, Farooqi added.

Speaking on the occasion, Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) President Muffasar Atta Malik said, “e-commerce nowadays has transformed the way people shop, which gives consumer more choices.”

He revealed that globally e-commerce sales had reached $2.3 trillion and projections showed a growth up to $4.5 trillion by 2021, according to 2017 estimates.

“Consumers are worried that their digital payments are unsafe, which is why half of the world population is still offline. In 2017, an estimated 1.7 billion people worldwide purchased goods online,” he said.

“Laws covering issues related to online shopping are yet to be properly devised and implemented in Pakistan.”

The KCCI president said the government should design a mechanism for the registration of complaints and strengthen the consumer protection legislation in order to make online shopping more secure for the consumers.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 16^th, 2018.

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