December 22, 2006	Friday	Ziqa'ad 30, 1427

KARACHI, Dec 21: City Naib Nazim Nasreen Jalil inaugurated the third National Conference on `Consumer Protection in Pakistan’ organised by Helpline Trust and the Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA) here at a local hotel on Thursday.

The theme of the moot was ‘Importance of consumer protection laws and their implementation’, during which speakers covered a wide range of topics relating to consumer protection laws.

Speaking on the occasion, Mrs Jalil, stated that framing of laws was not enough, as adequate implementation required follow up and monitoring by legislators as well as the civil society.

The CPLC chief and chairman of the Consumer Rights Council (CRC), Sharfuddin Memon said that CRC was established last year to protect consumers’ rights. During the period, the CRC tried to create awareness about consumer rights among the public and for that extensive media campaign was launched, he informed.

Earlier in his opening remarks, Hamid Maker, chairman, Helpline Trust said that in most countries, consumer protection was a serious business. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, due to lack of government support, there are only two consumer protection laws, one in Islamabad, which was passed by the National Assembly in 1995 and the other in Punjab, introduced in 2004, he added. He said that like most of our other laws, these had also been completely ignored.

The Consumer Protection Ordinance, Sindh, was prepared by a committee set up by Sindh governor but unfortunately it was never presented to the Sindh Assembly for ratification. As such, Sindh was still without a consumer protection law, Mr Maker added.

Senator Nisar Memon, DG PSQCA Abdul Ghaffar Soomro, Justice (retd) Majida Razvi, EDO Syed Hasan Naqvi, Shafi Parekh, Shahid Salim, Senator Engineer Ruksana Zuberi and Ayyaz Kiani also spoke.—PPI