Making A Better World - Milton Louw

(First appeared in Consumer News Namibia Magazine April 2013) In many areas of business today, the term Intellectual Property (IP) is being used to justify the higher price of a product or service – and the prevention of competing businesses being able to provide the same product or service. This means a competing business may not sell the product or service at all – even if it would mean a cheaper cost to the consumer. However, it is important that intellectual property rights protection be encouraged in society to ensure that better inventions, products or services are being created. Wikipedia defines IP as: Intellectual property (IP) rights are the legally recognized exclusive rights to creations of the mind. Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs. Common types of intellectual property ...

(First appeared in Consumer News Namibia Magazine April 2013) “Debt is like a disease that can enable us from living a happy and normal life by taking control over our lives. Most of us don't even know how we end up in the situation we are in. Buying everything we own with credit has become our culture. But don't let debt control your life any more. You can take over your life again. Imagine life without debt!” Is it true? Can a person do things in life without using getting into a debt trap? YES. The problem is not about using debt or cash, but rather about financial management and making sure you keep yourself out of trouble and ensure you don’t worry too much about the level of credit you have or are using. Remember the following are tips only – you must find the ones that work best for your and apply them to your life. 1. Don’t get into debt Use cash wherever you can and do not take out any debt except for a motor vehicle or a house. 2. Spend less money th...

(First appeared in Consumer News Namibia Magazine April 2013) On 12 April 2010, the Bank of Namibia announced that “..As part the Namibian payment system reform initiative of which the implementation of the local card switch, NAMSWITCH, has been one of the milestones, the Namibian banking industry resolved to discontinue petrol cards in Namibia in the near future. The public will instead be allowed to purchase fuel with internationally accepted debit and credit cards. The Payment Association of Namibia (PAN) wishes to inform the public that they can use their debit and credit cards to purchase fuel at Filling Stations. These developments are good steps in the right direction for consumers, for fuel retailers, and for the country as a whole. The use of broader range of payment instruments at Fuel Stations provide consumers with choices of which payment instrument to use and as such eliminate cash based transactions in favour of a more convenient, secure and cost-effective method of...

(First appeared in Consumer News Namibia Magazine April 2013) Consumers International (CI), the global federation of 250 consumer groups, published its Consumer Agenda for Fair Mobile Services ahead of World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD) on Saturday 15 March 2014. In the run up to 15 March, consumer groups from around the world made a call on mobile phone service providers to demand better services for the 7 billion mobile users across the globe. Mobile rip offs are commonplace – from holidaymakers being stung by four figure roaming bills abroad, to customers tricked into paying to receive text messages. With smartphones set to function as a remote control for more and more aspects of our lives, consumer groups believe now is the time to ensure big mobile companies are held to account for unfair, substandard services. In consultation with consumer groups around the world, CI drew up a Consumer Agenda for Fair Mobile Services, which outlines what the consumer rights movement wa...

(First appeared in Consumer News Namibia Magazine March 2013) The Bank Windhoek group of companies has been supporting entrepreneurial development among children of school going age through the Bank Windhoek BizzKids competition. Last year, the winners were Keanu da Silva (13) and Keyat da Silva (11) trading as “Team D” from Eldorado Secondary School and M H Greeff Primary School. The business product they created was the “ My Do and Get Book ”. In basic terms, the two brothers sold work plans for children to do household chores to teach them to be responsible and at the same time earn pocket money for household chores done. Wikipedia explains “pocket money” as follows: An allowance is an amount of money given or allotted usually at regular intervals for a specific purpose. In the context of children, parents may provide an allowance (British English: pocket money) to their child for their miscellaneous personal spending. The person providing the allowance is usually trying t...

(First appeared in Consumer News Namibia Magazine March 2013) World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD) was established on 15 March 1983 to promote consumer rights around the world. For WCRD in 2014, consumer organisations around the world are highlighting the consumer issues that are undermining and frustrating the success of mobile phone services. The international consumer body, Consumers International (CI) will be launching a new Consumer Agenda for Fair Mobile Services. The agenda sets out the issues that most effect consumers including the need for access to a reliable service, the security of their data and fair contracts and billing. CI will submit the Agenda to the World Telecommunications Development Conference, held by the International Telecommunications Union, where they will be calling on phone regulators and companies to take action to stop these issues undermining the success of this new technology. Consumer Agenda for Fair Mobile Services addresses the issues tha...

(First appeared in Consumer News Namibia Magazine March 2013) I have been plagued in the past few weeks with the bad level of service I received from companies around Namibia. It has gone from a restaurant which brought the starters (oysters) twenty minutes after the main course had arrived, (the main course was a medium-done steak and should have taken much longer than shelling oysters), to a telephone call to a bank to request their latest home loan rates and I was informed that the person dealing with that type of enquiry is not answering their phone. This led me to look again at what service is, and more importantly how do we go about creating a “service culture” in the country. Allow me to first define the words Service and Culture. For me the word SERVICE is “performing work for someone else”. Culture is defined as the “total inherited ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge, which constitute the shared bases of social action.” Looking at these meanings we look a...