ISLAMABAD, Aug 25: Speakers at a workshop here on Monday called for a countrywide drive to persuade the government to frame legislation aimed to ensure protection of consumer rights.

The participants of the consultative workshop titled “Role of media for consumer rights protection” organized by Civil Society Alliance urged the media to be a partner in the drive and play its part to ensure effective legislation and enforcement of the relevant laws relating to consumer rights. They stressed the need for taking steps for removal of restrictions of access, launching of an awareness drive among the consumers through media, minimising the 30-day claim time and reducing the judgment period of six months.

The speakers said effective tools for monitoring should be introduced, and there should be an institution to monitor the violations of consumer laws. They said consumer opinion should be taken into consideration while setting prices and tariffs.

The laws should be more user- and consumer-friendly, a body should be established to lodge consumer complaints in the courts on behalf of consumers. The consumers should be considered as an independent body and conflict of interests between the government and consumers should be eliminated.

“The consumers should be provided financial and legal aid to fight their cases in consumer courts,” they added.

In a country like Pakistan where even the basic rights of citizenship are frequently contested before the courts, consumer protection is rather a more problematic and neglected category. As the present review of legislation reveals, the treatment of the consumer in Pakistan varies from complete exclusion to only partial accommodation in the legislative scheme.

For example, in most cases there exists no procedure whereby the consumer may be able to lodge a complaint or have the consumers’ point of view represented adequately during tariff or price determinations.

There are a number of loopholes in the legislation currently in place to protect consumers and also in its regulatory mechanism. Consumers or their interest has seldom been considered while drafting legislations or ordinances affecting the consumers, the added.

There are consumer courts but they very sparsely spread throughout the country and in most cases not accessible to the common man.