HYDERABAD: Demand for protecting rights of consumers
By Our Correspondent
HYDERABAD, March 15: The adviser to the Sindh chief minister on environment and information technology, Noman Saigal, has stressed the need for a legislation to protect rights of consumers to make Pakistan a welfare state.
Presiding over a function held to launch the Consumer Rights Forum at the press club here on Wednesday to mark the World Consumers Rights Day, he warned industrialists of action if they did not set up treatment plants in units.
He called for collective efforts by the civil society to ensure consumer rights, saying mere criticism of the government would not work and the approach of refusing to listen the other side of the story should be given up.
“Internationally our rights as citizens of the country are not recognized because we have never tried to get them recognized, yet people are inspired from foreign countries,” he said while replying to points raised by Hyderabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Masood Pervez.
He said there was a need to change the culture of providing health and IT education facilities to a particular class.
He said hardly one per cent of industrial units had treatment plants. He said a strategy should be formulated to protect consumers’ rights because investors were bringing their money here.
He said the Environmental Protection Agency had analysed water samples of Hyderabad and towns of Karachi. He regretted that no data regarding emission control standard was available to check smoke-emitting vehicles. He said that unless environmental tribunals were formed, cases of environmental violations could not be disposed of, adding that the alternative energy department of his ministry was working on production of electricity through means of high tides, solar and windmill.
Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid chief Zia Awan said consumers’ rights were guaranteed under Article 9 of the constitution which defined the right to life of a citizen.
He said the chamber of commerce should not sit idle after writing a letter to the ministry concerned but it should be active on people’s issues.
He said a law regarding smoke-emitting vehicles was pending for 10 years. He said laws regarding adulteration were on statue books but were not being implemented.
Mr Awan maintained that capacity building of ministries was an important issue, saying that while a citizen could get reply from the US president, there was no hope for a similar response in Pakistan.
He urged officials of the rights forum to perform the role of a watchdog and give suggestions on important issues.
District Naib Nazim Zafar Rajput said not only the government but industrialists were also responsible for inflation.
He said price hike could be controlled if the opposition and the government took coordinated efforts. He offered help to the rights forum on behalf of the district government.
HCCI president Pervez said the government remained unaccountable for violating consumer rights.
He said the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority increased prices of gas and oil but it did not disclose the formula which formed the basis to raise the prices. He said he failed to understand that when prices of edible oil fell in the international market why the government raised duty on the commodity.
He criticized assembly members for doing nothing for their electorates.
He said enforcement of laws remained a major impediment, claiming that the National Accountability Bureau had wound up an inquiry into the sugar crisis because mills were owned by parliamentarians.
Sindh Abadgar Board office-bearer Mehmood Nawaz Shah said sugar consumption of the country was 3.6 million tons per year and so far around 2.4 million tons sugar had been produced in Sindh and Punjab.
He said that under the given circumstances, it was mind-boggling why there was a sugar crisis. He said the support price growers were getting was even less than the cost of production.
