Islamabad: Consumer Rights Commission of Pakistan (CRCP) has announced a series of events to commemorate the World Consumer Rights Day, which is celebrated on March 15 every year. The theme of the day for this year is “Water”. In addition to organizing a walk and a book launch, CRCP is holding a regional conference on issues of governance, market and consumer protection on March 15-16, 2004.

While announcing the events on the eve of WCRD, CRCP Secretary General Mr. Abrar Hafeez said that issues of water, particularly those relating to drinking water, have assumed critical importance over the last few years. He said it is the responsibility of the state to ensure that citizens have access to safe drinking water. However, he regretted, that more than half of the population of Pakistan did not have access to clean drinking water. As a result, the people were vulnerable to a number of diseases and epidemics. To top it all, there does not exist Safe Drinking Water Act in Pakistan. He also lamented that even many of the bottled water brands were not fit for human consumption, according to test reports of public sector institutions working in the water and health sectors. He told that CRCP had been running a Campaign for Safe Drinking Water since 1999 to create greater awareness about water issues and to lobby with the government to improve the access to citizens to safe water.

Mr. Abar Hafeez said that the issue of access to clean water was related to broader discourse of consumer protection, which has hitherto remained a neglected area. He said that in the absence of a consumer protection law, the consumers did not have an adequate forum where they could register their complaints and seek redressal for grievance, for instance, in case of provision of contaminated water by the civic agencies and bottled water industry. He lamented that with the lobbying efforts of CRCP and other civil society groups and stakeholders, the state of consumer protection legislation was well at the advance stage in Sindh, Balochistan and Punjab. There exist Islamabad Consumer Protection Act 1995 and NWFP Consumer Protection Act 1997 for the Islamabad capital territory and NWFP province, but their rules of business still remain to be notified. CRCP demanded the concerned authorities to immediately enact and enforce consumer protection legislation