Consumer Rights Day 15 March 2014

(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 that affect mobile consumers across the world and Namibia is no exception. Some of the issues that we need to address globally are:

1.       Provide consumers with access to an affordable, reliable service

Consumers want to be able to have access to affordable mobile services in order to communicate and to access information. It is only reasonable that they then expect those services to be consistent and of a high quality without drop outs in service.

2.       Provide consumers with fair contracts explained in clear, complete and accessible language

Consumers often feel cheated by their mobile provider, either because of unfair contract terms and conditions or because they didn’t understand what they had signed. Telecom providers should always provide consumers with fair contracts with all relevant information explained clearly so that consumers can exercise their right to make informed choices.

3.       Provide consumers with fair and transparent billing

Consumers shouldn’t be billed for services they didn’t request. We demand fairness and transparency in our bills, and protection from billing fraud.

4.       Provide consumers with security and power over their own information

Telecoms providers and regulators alike must protect the personal data that consumers give up in order to use mobile services. Whilst giving consent to use personal data can enhance the experience of using a mobile phone, it can also compromise the consumer’s right to safety. Consumers must be able to set the terms of how this data is used.

5.       Listen and respond to consumer complaints

Telecom providers should have effective complaints systems and if consumers are not satisfied there should be redress mechanisms to ensure a fair outcome. We must be able to penalise providers for abusive and unjust business practices.

Conclusion – Namibia’s Consumer Programme

For 2014 the Namibia Consumer Protection Group (NCPG) will be meeting with the Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (CRAN), Telecom Namibia and MTC to discuss the Consumer Rights Charter and how the present laws and regulations might not be meeting the needs of the Namibian consumer. Issues to be addressed include

a.       the lack of progress on number portability (keeping your own number no matter who the service supplier is);

b.      data services not up to advertised standards; and

c.       complaint procedure (redress for service gaps).

Any consumer which wants to have more information about these and other consumer issues can contact email address: miltonlouw@gmail.com

Service culture in Namibia

(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 at the key messages to found within these two words, namely

• Inherited
•  Shared
• Values
• Knowledge
• Perform work for someone else

This is the message we need to make part of our normal everyday lives. As Namibians we must strive to implant a Service Culture as a “lasting inheritance of shared wisdom.” This working together will make the end result far greater than the sum of individual contributions.

So how do you become part of creating this Service Culture? Or more importantly, why do you as a customer also have to play a part in encouraging the Service Culture.

During Apartheid, one of the important weapons used by activists was the “consumer boycott”.  A Consumer boycott means a boycott adopted by consumers of both product and services to express their displeasure with the seller, manufacturer, or provider. Sometimes, customers may refuse to purchase a particular product in order to show their dissatisfaction to the excessive price or offensive action of a particular manufacturer or producer.

At this point is also important to balance what part the Service Culture plays from the employees to us as customers, and how much of the Service Culture is influenced by the relationship between the employer and their employees.

So, if a company or service supplier provides me with employees who treat me badly or with slow service, I must differentiate between the service being done to me (is it personal) or is it a business culture within that business.

I have looked again at the service provided to me by the restaurant in my opening paragraph. This same restaurant was in the news less than two days later as the owner had fired a staff member for eating leftover food. For those of you who work in the hospitality industry, you know how unappetizing the food at your own workplace becomes, what still to say of the leftovers you see being thrown every day? Looking more closely at the restaurant and the way the owners are reported to treat their workers, I will boycott such a business until they improve their treatment of their employees – which will surely bring about an improved customer service.

Sometimes bad service must lead to a moral purchasing decision by a consumer. Yes, that means I will rather go without your product or service until such time as the relationship between employer, employee and myself becomes something worthy and part of our shared Namibian Service Culture.

Read Before You Buy

(First appeared in Consumer News Namibia Magazine January 2013)

When was the last time you read the product description or spent time understanding the labeling of a product you have purchased? How many times have you accepted that the product meets your needs without actually understanding what the product is composed of? Unless you have a specific allergy or irritation that is caused by a product, most of us would purchase without taking time to look at the specific ingredients of the product.

Recently, I was advised to take an energy supplement as I am working up till 10 hours a day, seven days a week. A friend gave me an energy supplement of Bioplus and swore that this would “energise” me and provide that needed boost. (It should be noted that the Bioplus sachets can be bought at most supermarkets, small shop or even a service station shop and are displayed quite prominently.) After about two weeks of taking these energisers on an almost daily basis, I went on Christmas leave and felt I would not need the drinks any more. After a day of two of not using the sachets I developed a craving to at least buy a sachet or two.

Normally, I am able to handle any craving by just ignoring it until it goes away. However, the feeling of wanting to have a sachet stayed with me for about a week.  After the week had passed I happened to be passing a store where the sachets were displayed – and having time on my hands – and took a chance to look more closely at what are the ingredients of the Bioplus sachets. Great was my surprise to read that each sachet has its main ingredient Alcohol at 10% of the volume.

That means the sachet of Bioplus has 10% of volume consisting of alcohol which puts it at more than twice the strength of a beer. The sachets I had been drinking without thought of a consequence was in fact putting me in danger of been drunk at work, or even more dangerous could cause me to have been over the legal limit of alcohol in my body if I had been caught driving.

I am sure that no police officer in the country (or my Boss for that matter) would believe that I had become drunk from drinking an energy drink.

As a consumer activist I always pride myself on being a “active consumer” in that I pay attention to what a product contains, but realized how quickly I had bought into the product myth that the Bioplus sachet would give me more energy. Looking back, I wonder if I really had more energy, or did the alcohol mislead me into believing that I had more energy while all it had done was give me a drunken buzz?

For myself, I will be checking the products I purchase a lot more closely, until the next time I buy into “the feel good factor”.

Not just food security – but also food safety

(First appeared in Consumer News Namibia Magazine January 2013)

Namibia is facing one of the worst droughts in the past three decades.  The Office of the Prime Minister, in March 2013, budgeted to assist about 331 000 people in communal areas that are classified as food insecure. In the meantime that amount has ballooned to almost 560 000 by December of the same year. The areas affected by the drought were mainly communal (rural) areas and resettled farms. Through the Office of the Prime Minister’s relief programme the government has distributed maize, beans, tinned fish as well as game meat.

During this period, most of the development partners have focused on poverty or food security, but very few have emphasized the need for food safety. Consumer organisations (in Namibia and abroad), also emphasize food safety when discussing food security, as this is the assurance that eating something will not damage your health.  This is an absolutely fundamental requirement, and as important as having enough food to eat.

According to Wikipedia:
“Food safety is a scientific discipline describing handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways that prevent foodborne illness. This includes a number of routines that should be followed to avoid potentially severe health hazards. The tracks within this line of thought are safety between industry and the market and then between the market and the consumer. In considering industry to market practices, food safety considerations include the origins of food including the practices relating to food labeling, food hygiene, food additives and pesticide residues, as well as policies on biotechnology and food and guidelines for the management of governmental import and export inspection and certification systems for foods. In considering market to consumer practices, the usual thought is that food ought to be safe in the market and the concern is safe delivery and preparation of the food for the consumer.”

The food safety challenges facing Namibia are still many. They include a lack of standards and policies, uncoordinated or perhaps even disjointed governance between organisations, inadequate testing facilities (though the Government is addressing this), lack of trained staff, porous borders with our neighbours and an absence of enforcement of the rules regarding food safety.

Perhaps it is time to asses our ability to not only react to a drought and the provision of food, but also include an element of food safety to ensure that all the people in the country are able to eat something that will not damage their health. After all the first two components of the consumer rights charter worldwide are the right to satisfaction of basic needs and the right to safety.

Milton Louw is a consumer activist and author. The opinions in this article are solely his own and in his personal capacity.

E-Justice - Changes proposed to laws on High Courts in Namibia

(First appeared in Consumer News Namibia Magazine October 2013)

Proposed amendments to the High Court Act that have been tabled in the National Assembly should pave the way for the introduction of a new electronic documents filing system in the High Court. The High Court Amendment Bill, which was motivated by the Minister of Justice, Utoni Nujoma, contains several proposed changes to the High Court Act of 1990 that would also give the Judge President of the High Court wider powers to make rules that would determine the way the court functions.

The main change highlighted in Parliament was that the provisions tabled would enable the Judge President to make rules that require legal documents to be filed with the court. The object of introducing the electronic court filing system, commonly referred to as e-justice, is to eliminate as far as possible the filing of court documents in hard copy. With the introduction of e-justice the aim is to achieve the quick and fair disposal of cases, which would in turn result in a reduction in litigation costs to the consumers / citizens in the country.

Immovable Property rules for unpaid debts

The judge president will (under the new law) be given the power to make court rules that would regulate the selling of immovable property of people being sued over unpaid debts where the property is the primary home of the debtor. Thus under the new rules, it would give the High Court the power to transfer the responsibility of collecting unpaid debts to a Magistrate’s Court.

By transferring the responsibility of collecting debts in execution of a judgement given against a debtor to a Magistrate’s Court, judges’ increasing workload would be eased and judgement debtors would no longer have to travel long distances to attend financial enquiry sessions in the High Court, as these would instead be held closer to debtors in district courts.

The High Court Amendment Bill also states that the judge president may make a rule to regulate the selling of immovable property where the property is the primary home of the person against whom a judgement has been granted. It is proposed that the judge president may prescribe that a reserve price should be set for the sale of such a property, and that the property may not be sold to the highest bidder at a price lower than the prescribed reserve price.

Alternative Dispute Resolution

Another of the change in rules would allow new compulsory alternative dispute resolution mechanisms that would have to be followed in certain cases before the court.

The aim with the compulsory alternative dispute resolution mechanism (ADRM) that is to be introduced in some cases is to enable the parties involved in a dispute to avoid having to go through expensive trial proceedings in court. In countries where alternative dispute resolution mechanisms have been adopted it has been shown that disputes can be resolved quicker and less costly than through litigation and court proceedings.

In the bill it is proposed that judges should be given the power to order parties to a dispute to refer their dispute for alternative dispute resolution, and that a case may thereafter be taken to court for a hearing only if an alternative dispute resolution process has not succeeded.

Milton Louw is a writer and social activist. He is presently the IT Project Coordinator at the Electoral Commission of Namibia. All opinions expressed in this article are his own.

(580 words)