| May 16, 2005 | Monday | Rabi-us-Sani 7, 1426 |
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Consumer rights
Road user charge
BESIDES revealing the mounting number of pending cases before the higher courts in Punjab, the Lahore High Court’s annual report released on Friday offers a damning indictment of the police and several government departments. Complaints alleging unlawful detention, harassment and refusal by the police to register cases totalled 5,974, 13,443 and 45,943, respectively, during 2004. The LHC also received 2,915 ‘criminal original applications’ filed by citizens, seeking the high court’s orders for various government departments to implement the court’s earlier decisions. These statistics are disturbing because they reveal that even the police and the government, by their failure to implement court orders, have been found to be on the wrong side of the law. It is for the courts to adjudicate cases and dispense justice, but what good can come to society if law enforcement and implementing agencies fail to do their job? In a country where long judicial delays have been the norm, the only hope of justice being done is when a case is finally heard and decided by a competent court. The government’s failure to implement court decisions amounts to negating the whole exercise and, thus, subverting justice.
According to the LHC report, a record number of nearly 66,000 cases are still pending before the court’s principal seat at Lahore and its benches at Rawalpindi, Multan and Bahawalpur. This calls for immediate remedial action by the government. The LHC chief justice’s observation that much more is required to be done in this area says it all. To start with, appointment of more judges and judicial officers at several tiers of the judiciary will help reduce the backlog, which at the sessions-court level in Punjab is no less than 77,817 cases. There is also a dire need to improve working conditions at the courts, and to provide necessary facilities to presiding judicial officers, their staff and litigants. An Asian Development Bank multi-million-dollar ‘Access to Justice Programme’ aimed at improving management of the judicial system at all tiers has been in place since 1999. A timely implementation of the various proposals of the programme is what is of critical importance.
The situation prevailing in the other three provinces is no different, where courts at all levels are similarly burdened with huge piles of pending cases. What has been lacking so far is the political will on the part of the government to make swift and inexpensive justice available to people at all costs. In many cases, court hearings are stretched out to the extent that often a person accused of a criminal offence is held in prison for a much longer period than if he had been found guilty and sentenced by a court of law. On the other hand, the implementation of any judicial reforms under the federal law ministry, as has been the case so far, also leaves much room for politicizing the process to suit the exigencies of political governments. What Pakistan needs is an independent judicial commission, headed by a senior judge, to direct and oversee the implementation of a judicial reform programme that must include the formation of conciliatory courts for minor disputes in rural areas and provide for simplified legal, prosecution and hearing procedures. Unless such a check-and-balance mechanism is put in place, along with the necessary substantive and procedural changes in the judicial system, the judiciary will remain burdened with a huge backlog of cases as at present.
THE announcement by the governor of Sindh that in two weeks the province will have a consumer rights committee (CRC) could be the first official step of its kind towards safeguarding the rights and interests of consumers. Formulated on the same pattern as the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee, the CRC will have 12 members on its board, including five women. The idea is sound and should be replicated in other provinces as well because it will, hopefully, provide consumers with a forum to register their complaints against unethical practices such as profiteering, hoarding, charging exorbitant prices, price-fixing, misleading advertising, adulteration and so on. The trend these days is for the public sector to make way for the private sector, and this is thought to be generally good for consumers since the public sector is known to produce goods and services of indifferent quality and with little regard for the preferences and interests of the consumers.
However, the fact is that the increasing corporatization of Pakistan’s economy and the rapid entry of private firms providing a wide range of goods and services have brought in a new set of problems facing the consumers. For instance, bank customers have from time to time complained of unnecessary charges and deductions. Mobile phone subscribers complain of wrong billing or overcharging while cable customers have grievances about bad and unreliable service. At a more basic level, consumers of foodstuffs and medicine users have to face the consequences of hoarding, profiteering and manipulated price hikes, and reckon with the risks of consuming adulterated food products or spurious medicines — all this without any forum to register a complaint. The few agencies that are supposed to be there to safeguard the rights of consumers like the Monopoly Control Authority, the bureau of supply and prices, or food inspectors at the district government level are toothless and need to be made more effective by improving their performance and enhancing their authority to punish the offenders. The setting up of a consumer rights committee can be a possible remedy, but it should be done in all provinces through legislation so that the intent of the government to protect consumers’ rights is codified into law.
THE Sindh government’s plan to introduce a road user charge in place of motor vehicle tax is not a new one. Under the proposal, vehicle owners will have to pay a certain tax per litre of fuel purchased and it will be added to the price of the fuel and will be payable at the time of filling. While the actual rate has not been decided, according to one report it will be half a rupee per litre for petrol and 30 paisa per litre for diesel. This means that higher consumption of fuel will amount to a higher road user charge. The assumption is that a motorist who wants to purchase, say, a full tank of petrol is going to be using the road network more than someone who wants to fill only five litres in his vehicle. A higher quantum of use then logically requires the motorist to pay a higher amount in tax.
Another advantage of replacing motor vehicle tax with a road user charge has to do with evasion. As things stand, a large proportion of vehicle owners do not pay the motor vehicle tax. This is partly the result of the failure by the excise and traffic departments to clamp down on motor vehicle tax evaders and partly the consequence of cumbersome procedures and long waits for those who pay the levy. The road user charge will bypass all of this because the vehicle owner will have no option but to pay since it will be charged at the time of filling fuel. Besides, there will be an incentive for vehicle owners to try and conserve fuel and perhaps cut down on all but essential drives which will have a positive effect on traffic congestion and rising air pollution. Assuming that the road user charge will not be exorbitant, it is something that the Sindh government should introduce.