Consumer protection law should be handled with care

Posted  Tuesday, March 19  2013 at  18:03

Marketers go into overdrive every time the integrity of their products is questioned. It could be the odd soda or beer bottle with impurities, a gadget with dysfunctional controls, a detergent that corrodes the users’ skin or a product that does not march its own hype leave alone expectations of customers.

Consumers sometimes experience letdowns in the market place but cut their losses for lack of nowhere to go for redress. That was until last week when the Consumer Protection Act came into force promising various levels of compensation for buyers short-changed by suppliers.

It is hoped that the law will motivate service providers to offer high quality goods at affordable prices in order to keep consumers happy. The rules require higher levels of disclosures by vendors of services like banks, consultancies and insurance companies and makers of goods.

Partial disclosures will attract jail terms of five years and fines in the range of Sh10 million.

While the regulations represent no fundamental change for many firms that engage in honest business, they are a thorn in the fresh of copycats that pass off substandard goods as genuine articles.

It is here that the regulators need to stamp their foot down so that counterfeiters are brought to book and genuine companies allowed to thrive. However, this should be balanced with restraint to avoid dampening the spirit of innovation that runs deep in Kenya’s informal sector.

For starters, quality controllers like the Kenya Bureau of Standards need to engage the upcoming light industries on the obligations imposed by the new law.

Regulators like the Competition Authority and the Kenya Industrial Property Institute should be more proactive in guiding market players not to infringe on the rights of other producers as well as consumers.

Consumer lobby groups should be careful not to abuse the provisions of the law by becoming so litigious that investors are scared of setting up bases in Kenya.

Cases where lobby groups just launch petitions to frustrate manufacturers and service providers, possibly at the behest of their rivals, should be avoided if the law is to progressively bring the benefits of high standard products to consumers.