By Howard Walker, Staff ReporterTHERE WILL be new legislation in the form of a Consumer Law to protect consumers from poor quality goods and service rendered.
Phillip Paulwell, Minister of Commerce, Science and Technology, made the announcement Monday as Jamaica celebrated World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD).
"We have seen the introduction of legislation like the Fair Competition Act. We have also seen amendments for greater protection in utilities. This year we intend to have the Consumer Law that will provide the Consumer Affairs (Commission) with the legal authority to prosecute offenders," the minister said. "Legislation is likely to be carried through this year that will give more teeth to the consumer affairs to prosecute offenders," he added.
WCRD is celebrated annually by consumer organisations world-wide on March 15. Each year under Consumers International, an independent, non-profit organisation recognised as the voice of international consumer movements, a topic of global interest is identified.
COST AND QUALITY
This year's theme 'Water is a Consumer Right' intends to bring to the fore issues surrounding consumers' access to the vital resource, raising concerns of cost and quality.
The Consumer Affairs Commission (CAC), in recognition of WCRD opened its week-long symposium at the PCJ Auditorium Monday with a host of speakers from different agencies.
According to a United Nations report in June 2003, one in every six persons lives without regular access to safe drinking water. Over twice that number 2.4 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation. Water-related diseases kill a child every eight seconds, and are responsible for 80 per cent of all illnesses and deaths in the developing world.
"Although the provision of water services has risen across the developing world during the past 20 years, those gains have largely been cancelled out by population growth," said Jasminko Karanjac, Professor of Water Management in the Faculty of Pure and Applied Science at the University of the West Indies (UWI).
According to Donovan Stanbury, Chief Technical Director in the Ministry of Water and Housing, in 1997, 61 per cent of Jamaicans had access to piped water. "Now 71 per cent has access to safe drinking water".
TALL ORDER
But he was quick to point out that it will cost the government $130 billion to increase access to water to the year 2020, 'which is a tall order'.
Stanbury revealed that the government was in the process drafting the Water Supply and Sewage Services Act, which is the privatisation of the supply of water. "The government can't do it by themselves."
He continued: "Water is a basic right but people will have to pay."
