Parliament will debate Consumer Protection with Minister of Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transport and Telecommunication (TEATT) Iraina Arrindell in a plenary session on Tuesday, at the request of three opposition members. It won’t be the first time the topic has come up in the legislature.
A quick search of this newspaper’s online archives reveals that a lot has been stated and written on the matter going back to mid-2011, most of it out of a need to better regulate the timeshare sector. At the end of that year the Chamber of Commerce called for a “Better Business Bureau” in connection with discussions on adjustments to the Civil Code that address the issue.
In fact, the “Consumer Protection Act” involved had been worked on by the Small Business Development Foundation (SBDF) already in 2006. Mention often has been made since then of an old consumer foundation headed by Virgilio Brooks that went dormant.
A decade later, little has changed and there is still no such active organisation. The subject came up again, for example, when a small-claims court was being considered in 2012.
In January 2013 Member of Parliament (MP) George Pantophlet said he wanted to quickly see a Consumer Protection Agency in place. He repeated that call in August and again in April 2014.
Five months later, during the opening of the new legislative year, Governor Eugene Holiday mentioned the establishment of “the competition and consumer protection authority” as an important policy challenge. MP Pantophlet touched on the subject once more in November of that year, when timeshare buyers’ protection became a “hot item” due to developments at the former Caravanserai Resort.
TEATT Minister at the time Claret Conner said in January 2015 that the latter problem had Government’s attention. MP Sarah Wescot-Williams in turn announced she would “pick up” two existing draft initiative laws in this regard, but Conner spoke soon afterward of “faulty legislation” that could not have his blessing.
At the closure of the parliamentary year in September 2015 then-MP William Marlin named the Consumer Protection Bureau as one of the intentions that had not been realised. That same month Ombudsman Nilda Arduin commented during a presentation to the legislature that the absence of such a body leads to her bureau receiving complaints that are meant to be dealt with by a consumer protection agency.
Taking all this into account, one can understand why by now many people are fed up with just hearing about it and would finally like to see some real action.
Enough said!
