A campaign has been launched by a local consumer union aimed at fighting abnormal rise in costs of products during the forthcoming festive season.
Towards the end of the year marked by a festive season, prices of products and services tend to gradually rise to unbearable levels leaving consumers puzzled and unable to do anything about it.
Effective next week, a team from the Association for the Defense of Consumer Rights Protection in Rwanda (ADECOR French abbreviation) will conduct inspections at various wholesale and retail shops in the city.
Damien Ndizeye the union’s executive secretary noted that they aim at ensuring products sold have fair prices and are in good quality.
“Normally foods and beverages have a high demand during the holiday season and some traders are ready to take advantage of the situation by raising the prices, this is a normal trend but it has to change,” he insisted.
Also the transport sector is affected since majority travel upcountry for festivities. ADECOR is collaborating with both the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MINICOM) and Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Agency (RURA) to ensure bus fares remain at normal rates.
“However we still have a problem, last month we had a meeting with transporters and agreed that bus fares should reduce from Frw20 to Frw18 per kilo meter, but we didn’t have a unanimous agreement since some claim that though fuel prices have reduced commodities relevant to their work are still high, spare parts for example,” he remarked.
In this respect, the consumer union set up a team to investigate whether the complaints were valid or it’s one of those recurring excuses aimed at squeezing more money from consumers during the holiday season.
The campaign will be implemented jointly by MINICOM under its consumer rights protection unit. The head of this department Eseparance Muhongerwa insisted that harsh punishments will be applied to ignorant traders.
Currently MINICOM has the right to confiscate expired goods or arrest traders involved in scandalous activities meant to cheat consumers but ADECOR is only limited to advocacy.
“We might be weak at the moment but we’re optimistic that our activities will be stronger when the president approves the consumer protection law,” said Ndizeye.
For the meantime ADECOR has been training various traders on consumer rights since some are not aware of privileges a consumer is entitled to when they approach them.
“Imagine! some traders would refuse to sell because its lunch time for example or doesn’t advise further the client on a commodity their selling, it even gets worse when they sell expired goods perhaps because they didn’t bother looking at the dates, these are among the basics we train them.”
As way to equip more traders with the knowledge, ADECOR intends to establish a school next year aimed at offering similar lessons.
Muhongerwa’s department also conducts the trainings, “we realized in Rwanda most traders lack competence in handling customers, this is why those in the wrong are first trained and given a warning if they repeat the same mistake, the law takes effect,” she advised.
“Affected consumers should feel free to contact toll free line 3739. If one finds a suspicious substance in their packaged beverage, and the retailer refrains to refund, the affected person should call us, and we will first investigate the matter, if it’s true the consumer will be refunded and the case will be reported to the relevant company for further investigations in order to avoid a wider occurrence of the error.”
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