Rights – as elusive as ever

When buying a product in Bangladesh, apart from the usual concerns about its price and quality, consumers have to worry about whether the product they buy, including life-saving drugs and baby food, can cause actual harm to their health or even be fatal to them. In fact, relatives visiting from abroad constantly warn us about buying cosmetics from shops here, and even go to the extent of bringing their own water filters and grocery items from back home, simply because one cannot trust whether the brands sold in many stores in Bangladesh are genuine or not. Toxic elements such as brick cips and diesel are constantly mixed in basic ingredients like chilli powder and cooking oil. Meanwhile, multitude of news reports, cartoons, editorials, even interventions from the government have failed to stem the sudden price hike of bare essentials like dairy and other food products. When talking about consumer rights in Bangladesh, it's impossible to concentrate on one particular area. Starting from contamination of food products to selling of counterfeit items and sudden rise in prices, consumers in the country are more or less doomed. 

The problem remains the same as with every other issue in the country — there is a law, the Consumer Rights Protection Act, 2009 (CRPA) to be specific, but as usual implementation continues to be rather elusive. Rules for the operation of the Act were only made in 2013. According to legal experts Saqeb Mahbub and Arafat Hosen Khan, while the Act mainly deals with the "obligations of economic operators and products safety", one of its main limitations is that it remains a mostly "administrative" Act without focusing on a "rights-based, bottom-up approach like other new consumer protection legislation around the world" (Protecting Consumer Rights, The Daily Star). They further argue that even though the Act has enabled the establishment of an institution tasked with consumer protection, it fails to address citizens' rights as consumers, falling short of empowering consumers to actively participate in the "enforcement of these rights." Thus, this enables the Act to be yet another flawed, bureaucratic legal mechanism that remains largely ineffective, once again allowing space for rampant corruption. 

Moreover, the process of filing complaints is a lengthy and complex one. While in most other countries there are designated institutions where consumers can file complaints, consumers in Bangladesh have to obtain the approval of the Director General of the Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection or any person authorised by him. Under the Act, complaints cannot be filed directly at the Magistrate's court; instead it has to be addressed to the Director General or someone authorised by him within 30 days of the "complained cause of action." Within 90 days of lodging the complaint, the charge has to be once again filed with the Magistrate Court with the approval of the DG. In short, the person or entity responsible for filing such complaints has to first be approved by a single individual, thereby leaving room for further irregularity. Consumers are hence not even given the opportunity to take their case to court, and are forced to rely on the concerned government officials. They can only thus hope that effective action will be taken by the concerned authorities against those who violate their rights. 

It takes little imagination to understand how time-consuming the whole process of simply filing and getting anyone to heed a complaint can be, especially when considering that this is Bangladesh we are talking about, where the culture of red tape and cumbersome government regulations rule. 

In what is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of filing consumer complaints, while the complainant does not need to bear any cost for filing a case, if the Magistrate responsible for investigating the complaint thinks that fault of the product needs to be proved by proper testing or analysis, the complainant will have to "bear the cost of the testing of the sample" (Booklet on Consumer Protection in Bangladesh, 2010, published with support from the Government of Bangladesh and financed by the European Union). It is ironic that after going through the whole process of filing their complaint and getting someone to acknowledge their claim, consumers have to pay money to ascertain whether the product is contaminated or whether it has in anyway been tampered with. Which ordinary citizen would want to suffer through such an exhaustive, time consuming process that will also require them to shell out money for a process that should ideally be paid for by the governing authority? Does this not seem to perpetuate the idea that all consumers with a complaint against any product or trader can afford to allocate extra money in their budget for something like this? We also need to remember that the body responsible for testing products for quality and safety, the Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institute (BSTI), is beset with problems of its own. Allegedly, the organisation does not even have modern equipment and facilities that can accurately test samples of products. Let's not even get into various media accounts that question the efficiency and integrity of some BSTI officials. But despite all that, we can argue that if after testing it is found that the sample is safe and the consumer's complaint is false, the consumer could be ordered to pay the costs incurred. However, asking them to do so even before anything is ascertained would further deter consumers from taking any stand against unscrupulous businesses. 

It is also very unfortunate that there is no separate court that deals with consumer rights in Bangladesh. If we were to provide an example, India has famously established a consumer court that deals with cases regarding consumer grievances and disputes. Consumers are not required to hire a lawyer, and can represent themselves without having to pay any court fee, except for a nominal amount. Moreover, in order to provide inexpensive and quick redress of consumer complaints, 604 district forums, or quasi-judicial bodies, and 34 State Commissions have been set up in each district and state of the country as well as at the national level. 

It's true that mobile courts and sudden raids by the police have unearthed factories and establishments selling spurious products or manufacturing under extremely unhygienic conditions. Fines have been imposed and imprisonment threatened. But such raids are nearly not enough compared to the extent of the problem in almost every sector. This allows countless of unscrupulous traders and manufacturers to continue to dupe the consumers with unfair prices, substandard or fake products. 

The issue of filing a complaint, moreover, would arise only if our country's consumers are aware that they have rights under the law. Even if urban consumers might have some vague idea of the existence of a law that protects their rights, citizens living in rural areas usually remain ignorant of such a law. While you will find a couple of posters here and there, but there is no informed, wide-spread programme that makes consumers aware of their rights. While traders have managed to build up a strong nexus, even successfully colluding with corrupt officials and law enforcers, consumers, though larger in numbers than the traders, have failed to organise or mobilise themselves. We could once again learn from our neighbour, where a wide-scale organised consumer movement against black marketing, adulteration of food, food shortage and hoarding forced the Indian Government to strictly enact the Consumer Protection Act 1986. This long-drawn battle started in the 1960s but the persistence of consumers led to not only the formulation of a law but also its appropriate enforcement. 

If we, the consumers, want our voices to be heard, then the time to be armchair activists is over. We are the ones who need to make the authorities, the traders, the numerous bodies realise that if we are to spend our money, we deserve to get the best. We deserve to know how it is being spent, why prices of certain products are suddenly increased, why services are abruptly halted, why in the name of strikes, we are forced to suffer. And until we get what we deserve, we need to organise, mobilise, and demand our right. 

The writer is a member of the editorial team, The Daily Star.