Protection of consumers’ rights in the State demands fulfillment of two imperatives, raising awareness among consumers about their rights especially in rural areas and strengthening the consumer protection system, opines Bhopal based consumer rights activist Vijay Saxena.
“We need a great social movement for generating not only awareness in consumers, but also to develop sense of probity among the providers of goods and services and to make the official machinery responsive to consumer grievances,” Saxena said in a candid talk with The Pioneer on Wednesday.
Vijay Saxena is the General Secretary of Upbhokta Sanrakshan Kalyan Samiti an organization active in the field of consumer protection for more than 15 years.
The organization offers free of cost services to aggrieved consumers for settlement of disputes without going to the consumer protection courts. Upbhokta Sanrakshan Kalyan Samiti has active units in almost all districts of the State. Apart from providing consultancy for settlement of consumer disputes, the organization has also been actively engaged in running campaigns and holding workshops across the state to raise awareness among the consumers.
“The organization has been handling different types of cases all over the State. There is a remarkable difference between the kind of maters coming from rural and urban areas.
“In the big cities, we mostly come across grievances related to electronic gadgets like laptops, refrigerators, mobile etc. In small cities and interior areas, most of the complaints are related to edible items or seeds, fertilizers and supply of lPG cylinders,” he remarked.
Talking about different category of cases in rural and urban areas, Saxena also points towards new trends that have grown in recent times.
“There are two distinct trends, mostly in the urban areas that should be addressed. Firstly, there are cases involving educational institute like coaching centres which take full money in advance and in case the student is not satisfied by the teaching standards they refuse to refund the money. Secondly, very recently we have come across complaints regarding private firms withholding salaries,” Saxena told.
Although a certain degree of consumer rights awareness is evolving in the cities, the grey area is a near complete lack of awareness in the rural areas, Saxena points out with concern.“In the villages, there is a total absence of any campaign or public mobilization for raising awareness about consumer rights.
“The Government should understand that even the common villager who buys goods from market is a consumer with certain rights which should be protected. In lack of awareness and mechanisms to redress grievances, the hapless villager has nowhere to go in case of violation of his consumer rights.
“There is an urgent need to beef up awareness campaigns in the rural areas. The Government and NGOs have a special responsibility in this regards,” Saxena said.
“Even greater area of concern is that there are not sufficient numbers of judges and jury members in the consumer courts. Then, over a period of time we have been witnessing a trend of rising influence of lawyers in consumer courts who are more interested in extending the number of hearings. This severely impacts the justice delivery mechanism which has become slow and overloaded,” he added.