No justice after consumer law

A customer is a king is an old song, but Malawians are usually treated as slaves or passive recipients by those who sell goods, services and technologies.

For Thambani resident John Makumba, the list of neglected consumer cries is incomplete without the irksome conduct of mobile phone companies, the multibillion kwacha giants whose pocketsize technologies are notorious for calls that are delayed, noisy, prematurely dropped or hard to get through.

“Phones have become part of life, but it appears people no longer care about their consumers. When you have a problem, it takes over 10 minutes to get connected to the customer care centre and another hour to get assisted. Whoever said a customer is a king did not know what it means to be a Malawian,” says Makumba about the phone companies which connect about five million Malawians to the world.

This is no new cry. It mirrors a widespread mood graphically decried by former president the late Bingu wa Mutharika in 2011 when he challenged the phone operators to improve service delivery, saying: “I am very embarrassed with your operations, especially when calls get cut in the middle of conversations with foreign leaders.”

However, the presidential statement spelled no end to the phone woes often blamed on poor transmission and power blackouts.

Yet they show there is a void in the country’s steps towards guaranteeing consumer rights, a gap that should make Malawians worried.

That it took a sitting president to air out a concern that is commonplace could be a vindication of what Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) executive director John Kapito said at the height of electricity outages three years ago: Malawians have a tendency of whining without lodging their complaints officially.

In November 2010, he bemoaned: “Many people just complain without putting their complaint in writing. Do they expect us to act based on assumptions? This makes complaints handling, documentation and follow-up difficult.”

However, the passivity of Malawians and reliance on Kapito’s civil society group shows there is a deeper problem aggravated by the failure to abide by the Consumer Protection Act.

Enacted in 2003, the law provides for the establishment of a Consumer Protection Council to safeguard the interests and rights of consumers as well as to raise awareness on how to claim their rights and seek redress.

In October last year, Ministry of Trade and Industry public relations officer Wiskes Nkombezi said government is in the process of domesticating the law and setting up the council to which Cama should be affiliated.

“There are a number of nominations that we have received from organisations from which we would tap membership. We are however facing bottlenecks such as changes in the organisations from which we get the nominations and financial resources,” Nkombezi told The Nation.

According to Section 10 of the Consumer Protection Act, the council shall comprise secretaries for the Ministry of Trade and Industry Commerce as well as representatives of a consumer association, economic organisation, Malawi Confederation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, trade unions and women groups.

Apart from “providing and promoting consumer education”, the council is mandated to monitor the likes of Cama so that they operate in transparent and effective manner throughout the country, establish whether prices are justifiable, investigate complaints and take offenders to task.

Capable of suing and being sued, it was also envisaged to “investigate any complaint received regarding consumer protection, and where appropriate, refer the complaints to a competent court authority to ensure action is taken.”

Unfortunately, it has been gathering dust for 10 years. Justice delayed is justice denied, it is said.

The Communications Act empowers Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra) to ensure quality and variety of services in the telecommunications, broadcasting and postal sectors.

Macra director of consumer affairs Thokozani Chinde told the press recently that while communications consumers can lodge complaints with the regulator, other sectors are prone to abusive tendencies because there is no agency to enforce consumer rights apart from the civil society.

She reckons relying on civil society organisations can be unreliable due to unpredictable funding and hidden agendas.

“Putting consumer rights policy will not only bring sanity, quality and fairness in business, but also enhance consumer confidence and assertiveness and iron out market inequalities between the operators and consumers.”

Like Kapito, Chinde says Malawians prefer suffering in silence to reporting unsatisfactory tendencies.

“Very few people will come forward to register their concerns and seek redress. Many feel it is a waste of time and energy to do so. For those in the rural areas, it can be costly to travel to and from customer centres,” she said.

She reckons there is need for massive sensitisation to ensure people are aware that Macra’s mandate is to provide for mediation, negotiation, arbitration or litigation when need arises. Even the iced Consumer Protection Council was envisioned to do as much, even withdrawing insincere and misleading advertisements, publishing complaints handled over time, cautioning suppliers and taking decisive action likely to lead to court fines and jail sentences.