The consumer court proposed in a new draft Bill will allow for severe measures to be taken against shoddy business practices, reports Pat Sidley
A FAR-REACHING Bill giving provinces the power to fine businesses and jail executives for harmful business practices is being drafted by the nine provincial
The Consumer Protection Bill will strengthen the rights of South African consumers, creating powerful institutions to protect individuals from shoddy business practices.
The provinces have co-operated to ensure that all consumers have the same rights and that businesses and other institutions around the country all play by the same set of rules.
If passed, the Bill will:
* create a consumer court in each province, with the power to levy fines of up to R200 000, pass stiff sentences of up to five years’ imprisonment, and even ban a firm or business engaging in harmful practices;
* give powers of search and seizure to the investigating officers in the provincial consumer affairs office;
* introduce “class action” suits for consumers to join with others similarly affected and bring a single legal action in the consumer court. A major advantage is that this will be free for consumers.
The mere discussion of such legislation is likely to send a strong message to commerce and industry that the days are numbered for those who have taken advantage of the lack of protection for consumers, particularly the semi-literate and ill-educated.
Each province is to have a consumer affairs office in each department of economic affairs. This office will carry out research, and deal with communications, advice, consumer education, inspections and investigations.
Closer to consumers on the ground will be advice offices in several centres to which consumers can come either to lodge a complaint or gather information.
The court would be a last resort along the chain provided by the consumer structures being set up in the provinces. The draft legislation will include a proposal that each province have a consumer forum made up of representatives of consumer interest groups.
The provincial consumer offices and forums would communicate with one another through a structure known as the Interprovincial Consumer Affairs committee.
All of this is to be funded by a budget of about R2- million per province. This amount is to be increased when certain central government consumer functions, such as trade inspections, are devolved to the provinces along with already budgeted amounts.
Provincial consumer representatives have already adopted a charter of consumer rights, based on an international charter, and added the right not to be
The consumer departments in the provinces will work within a policy framework with many elements likely to make consumers happy and rattle unscrupulous business and other institutions.
Among these elements are:
* the right to satisfaction of basic needs like basic goods and services, including “adequate water, food, clothing, shelter, sanitation, health care, and
* the right to consumer education and the right to be informed so as to make educated choices;
* the right to be heard — with consumer interests represented in places where decisions are made which will affect consumers;
* the right to safety — to be protected against unsafe products and services;
* the right to choose.
To bring this about, the provinces’ consumer desks hope
* enact the relevant legislation;
* get the relevant information for consumers and educate them;
* promote the use of plain language;
* carry out inspections in terms of existing laws which cope with credit, weights and measures, etc;
* establish mechanisms so that businesses are accountable to consumers.
A major hurdle on the way to this Utopia has been crossed: the will to protect consumers is part of provincial government policy in all provinces and represents a major break from the past.
“The previous government disempowered consumers by giving very little support to consumer protection agencies, the promotion of consumer education or the dissemination of information,” says a discussion document on policy used by the provinces’ consumer committee.
In a section referred to as “the legacy of apartheid”, the document refers to a “tidal wave of corruption and incompetence” and adds: “Dealing with corrupt, incompetent, illegitimate and unaccountable government administratrations and unscrupulous businesses became a part of life” for most consumers.
Existing legislation which may have protected consumers was scattered, watered down and remote from the people it ought to have protected.
While these laws will remain, the structures, policies and proposed new laws will bolster the ability of consumers to have problems dealt with closer to home — and much more effectively.
# How complaints will be dealt with
Pat Sidley
Ripped-off consumers would redress their problems in the future in the following way if proposed laws are
Let’s say you have just bought a car from a second-hand dealer. When you arrive to collect it, you find you have been given a different one to the car you thought you had bought, it has cost you more than the agreed amount, and it gets you home, but it won’t start again.
When you confront the dealer, he shows you documents you signed which purport to represent your consent to all this abuse. Then he threatens you with violence.
Shortly after, the dealer disappears and then pops up in other places, pulling the same scam, but setting up different companies everywhere he does this.
You will call in at your local advice office where you will find somebody who understands the law, can cope with the problems, and, what’s more, knows of several others who have been ripped off by the same dealer.
The advice officer will see if the issue can be resolved between you, the consumer, and the dealer, but he soon sees he’s dealing with a major scam and it needs a more serious look.
He refers the issue up the chain and it lands in the offices of the director of inspection services whose staff will investigate the problem.
They pounce on the dealer’s latest business premises shortly before he opens for business one Tuesday morning (they have the relevant paperwork to make their raid legal).
They search his premises and in his safe find enough to back up a case against him to support your claim and all your fellow-sufferers. This case is then brought before the new consumer affairs court which is in turn presided over by a retired supreme court judge or lawyer who has been around a while, has some standing and knows the territory.
After hearing the case — with your costs borne by the province — he then pronouces that the dealer should either go to jail for five years or pay R200 000 from his ill-gotten gains, and he may order the business and the particular practice banned for all time.
A curator will be appointed by the court to seize the crooked dealer’s assets which may then be frozen and redistributed among his victims to compensate them for their losses at his hands.