‘Engage consumers on regular basis to know their concerns’

Mr Justice Samuel Date-Bah, a retired Justice of Supreme Court and Chairman of University of Ghana Council, has urged regulatory authorities to engage consumers on regular basis to know their concerns.

He said the regulatory authorities needed to develop a robust communication strategy to reach out to consumers and to educate them on how to file complaints and seek redress.

He was speaking at a Policy Roundtable on Consumer Welfare through Effective Regulation organised by CUTS International on Monday and appealed to CUTS to engage civil society, academia and the media so as to address the pressing consumer concerns in the country.

Mr. James Lartey, the Head of Communications at the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), urged the public to be aware of fake drugs in the country, saying the fake drug industry had become sophisticated and that it was almost impossible to differentiate, in most cases, original drugs from fake ones.

Using the example of the fake Zentel, which was discovered during FDA's routine post surveillance exercise, he said some of these fake drugs found themselves in the shelves of renowned pharmacies and urged that public to volunteer information to enable the FDA flush out perpetrators.

Mr. Appiah Kusi Adomako, Centre Coordinator for CUTS, called for an effective collaboration between public regulatory authorities and CSOs to strengthen the regulatory regime thereby increasing consumer and producer confidence.

He called for the swift passage of the consumer protection policy and law so as to protect consumers.

World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD) is observed each year on March 15 to mark the historic address made by US President John F. Kennedy in which he set out a vision of consumer rights and recognized the importance of consumers as a group.

WCRD has become an important annual occasion for mobilising citizen action and solidarity within the international consumer movement. The day is an opportunity for promoting the basic rights of all consumers, demanding that those rights are respected and protected and protesting about the market abuses and social injustices, which undermine them.