CONSUMER CONCERNS…WORLD CONSUMER RIGHTS DAY – protecting against risks of a growing digital world

Mar 26, 2017 News

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By Pat Dial

On 15th March every year, World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD) is celebrated worldwide when focus is given to a particular consumer concern and consumers assert their solidarity. This year’s focus is “Building a digital world consumers can trust”.
By 2020, 52% of the world’s population would have been online. At present, the figure is 40% which means that in less than five years the numbers of people worldwide being online would have grown by a third. Long before the third quarter of the century, therefore, the entire world would have been online.
The computerization of the world would bring fundamental and revolutionary changes in the life of Mankind. In Guyana there is the urgent necessity for state agencies to educate the population as to the constructive and creative use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The School System had already started work in this direction and many of the younger generation are quite knowledgeable in ICT. It has already become very important in Research and Education as a whole.
ICT would be far more extensively used in commerce and would be the main way people buy and sell goods and services. It would also be used to find markets for the producers of industrial and agricultural products and could lead to the revival of industries such as Rice and Sugar.
It would also be progressively used by Government. People would be able to access the services of Government Departments online. Such, for example, would be the payment of taxes, getting birth and death certificates and dealing with Departments such as the Deeds Registry, the Housing Department, the Forestry Department and Geology and Mines.
People would be able to contact each other, both at home and overseas, with greater convenience, speed and certainty. In other words, ICT would be able to make social, economic and even political life easier, cheaper and less time-consuming.
But these benefits and the revolution which are now overtaking the world could bring with it certain risks to the consumers. For one, the new dispensation would require everyone to supply, overall, a great deal of personal information such as bank account and credit card details, medical records, e-mail and telephone connections, details on relatives and close members of one’s family.
All this information would be in the hands of servers and there is no security for it. Secondly, it could be stolen by unscrupulous persons. The accusations and cross-accusations of hacking of e-mails which came out during the recent United States Presidential elections is an example of this.
In this milieu of openness, ordinary consumers need to be protected more than ever and what underlines this necessity is that, at the moment, even highly advanced and sophisticated developed states such as the United States of America are finding it difficult to protect their secret and confidential information.
The first line of defense lies with the service providers who must meet the challenges of finding secure and reliable ways of utilizing data and developing strategies that would lead to a trustworthy digital world for consumers. The theme of this year’s WCRD “Building a digital world consumers can trust” emphasizes this necessity and call for its quick implementation.
WCRD is particularly associated with Consumers International (CI) which has a membership spread over the globe. The Guyana Consumers Association was one of the comparatively early members of CI because of the brilliant leadership of the late Eileen Cox who was known and respected in consumer circles worldwide.
Consumer organizations all over the world, including our own Association, are devoted to protecting basic rights of consumers, demanding those rights are protected and respected, challenging market abuses and other social injustices, as for example when public utilities like the Telecommunication companies overstep their mark and attempt to exploit consumers.
Consumerism is a necessary concomitant to the successful working of the Free Market Economic System and indeed any other economic system.
This need for Consumerism has led to its steady growth in all countries. Consumerism prevents adversarial relationships between the people of a country and economic and governmental systems and generally results in happier and easier relationships.
The main consumer bodies which the public could approach for help in their problems are the Guyana National Bureau of Standards, the Public Utilities Commission, the Consumer Division of the Ministry of Business led by Ms. Cheryl Tinnis, the Competition and Consumers Affairs Commission led by Ms. Dawn Holder and the Guyana Consumers Association.

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