Recently, Trade Competition and Consumer’s Protection Authority (TCCPA) has presented its ninemonth performance report to the Trade Affairs Standing Committee in the House of Peoples Representatives. In the reported period, the authority has gained encouraging achievements in-terms of raising the awareness of the society on ways of protecting themselves from the illicit commercial practices.
What is more, according to a study conducted to assess consumers’ satisfaction, it was found that 85 percent of them are well satisfied. This doesn’t mean that the authority has been going without facing difficulty. Lack of properly organized information was the major challenge the authority has been encountered with.
The market information gathering process is not helpful and is also difficult to be compiled as the informers are mainly accessed through the phone. Absence of a clear mandate, shortage of skilled human power, lack of legal framework, professional turnover, procurement related problems, among others are mentioned as challenges.
The main responsibility given to the authority is controlling rapacious merchants who want to monopolize the market via hiking the price of consumer goods without pertinent economic reasons and ensuring consumers satisfaction. According to the report, the Authority has passed fair and transparent decisions which result in consumers’ satisfaction. This doesn’t mean that the level of satisfaction has hit the score board.
Hence, it needs to do more on the enforcement of laws. Though the authority set to implement three projects that aim to build its capacity, they have failed due to a shortage of budget, and lack of communication with stakeholders, it was noted. The Authority has been discussing with various stakeholders on ways of discharging responsibilities on quarterly basis. One of the goals set by the Authority is promoting market transparency and exposing unfaithful advertisements and monitoring unhealthy consumer goods.
However, the performance is low, according to the report. Amare Wolde, Planning and Evaluation Director at Trade Competition and Consumer’s Protection Authority said awareness raising training is offered to the society in order to protect the right of consumers. However, it is not sufficient compared to the everincreasing population.
“Thus, we have to work more than ever to ensure consumer’s right protection and fair trade competition. The other most important thing is, consumers themselves should receive receipt while they buy consumer goods so as to claim their rights if something went wrong. Considering consumers’ knowledge gap, the authority has offered training for more than 3000 individuals residing in nine states including two city administrations.
The training was given using two techniques: training of trainers and face to face approach. By and large, it made possible to provide awareness raising training for over 600 trainees of trainers. In the face to face training, 3,692 individuals have received training in the reported period. In relation to combating unfaithful advertisements, the Authority has been doing assessment once in a month which is below the target set to achieve. Having all these challenges, the Authority is striving to ease the challenges through hiring skilled manpower, providing incentives to workers and raising awareness of the community at large.
The Ethiopian Herald May 16/2019
BY ESSEYE MENGISTE
