Islamabad: Consumer Rights Commission of Pakistan (CRCP) has demanded comprehensive legislation for protection of consumer rights in Pakistan on the occasion of World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD), which is observed on March 15 every year around the globe. CRCP stressed that effective consumer-specific legislation was need of the hour in view of the shrinking state control and mounting liberal market forces in Pakistan.

While underscoring the need for consumer legislation, CRCP lamented that consumers in Pakistan were extremely vulnerable to manipulative schemes of market and irresponsive nature of public sector. Consumers are provided with low quality, unsafe and hazardous goods and services. To top it all, there is a marked absence of institutional mechanisms and legislative arrangements for redressal of their grievances. Consumers, when harmed or cheated, do not have easy and credible options to seek judicial recourse and compensation. Such an abysmal state of affairs necessitates pertinent legislation capable of protecting consumers' legally enforceable rights, CRCP said.

CRCP stressed that the need for comprehensive consumer legislation was greater than ever in the face of trade liberalization under the World Trade Organization rules, which entailed enormous potential threats to consumer rights. While deliberating on "Corporate Control of Food Chain: the GM Link," which is theme of the World Consumer Rights Day this year, CRCP said that consumer concerns regarding genetically modified (GM) link arise from potential health risks in use of products being manufactured from GM organisms. This violates consumers' right to safe products. Another concern pertains to entirely missed or only partial labeling of GM food. This violates consumers' right to information and the right to make choices, CRCP said. It demanded that entry of GM food should be banned in market until Pakistan acquires necessary laboratorial facilities to test GM food for human consumption and laws are put in place for its labeling

CRCP, while highlighting the existing legal paraphernalia for consumer protection, said that legal scenario was not very promising for consumers in Pakistan. Although Consumer Protection Acts have been promulgated in Islamabad and North-west Frontier Province (NWFP) in 1995 and 1997 respectively, they remain useless due to their restrictive scope and failure of the concerned authorities to formulate relevant business rules. In Punjab, a private bill for consumer legislation was presented in the Punjab Assembly in 1999, which is pending until now. In the backdrop of lacunae in the Islamabad and NWFP Consumer Protection Acts, CRCP proposed a Model Consumer Protection Act in 2000 to drive out inadequacies in the government drafts. The Act was presented to Pakistan Law Commission and the Ministry of Law on World Consumer Rights Day in 2000. CRCP under its Campaign for Consumer Protection Legislation (CCPL) has been actively lobbying for enactment of the Model Act and improvement of existing consumer protection laws in accordance with comprehensive and balanced provisions of the Model Act, which safeguard interests of all stakeholders. In Sindh, a draft Consumer Protection Law has been vetted by the Sindh Law Department but it remains to be notified yet. In Blochastan, the discourse on consumer legislation has not called attention of the provincial government despite issuance of directives by the federal government to this effect.

CRCP impressed upon the concerned federal and provincial authorities to prioritize enactment and meaningful implementation of consumer legislation high on their agendas. It stressed that rules should be formulated for full implementation of Islamabad and NWFP Consumer Protection Acts. CRCP also demanded that the Sindh Consumer Protection Act should be enacted without further delay and the process of consumer legislation enactment in Punjab and Balochistan should be expedited.