Speakers at a conference stressed the need of establishing assessment bodies to protect the consumers rights and preclude the marketing of substandard and counterfeit products across country.
These views came up by various schools of thoughts at a conference on "Role of Accredited Conformity Assessment Bodies for Consumer Protection", which was jointly organised by Pakistan National Accreditation Council (PNAC) and Helpline Trust held at local hotel on Saturday.
The main objective of the conference is to highlight the importance of Conformity Assessment Bodies, share ideas and develop better understanding and create awareness about the accreditation and its Importance from Pakistan's perspective.
Speakers were former Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Pakistan Saiduzzaman Siddlqui, A. Hamid Maker, Founder Trustee, Helpline Trust, Engr. Abdul Rashid Khan, Director General, PNAS, Imran Bhatti, Certification Manager and Tariq Qamar, Manager Food Services Certification, Farooq Sami, Deputy Manager, Platinum Pharmaceutical, Syed Zain-ul-Ibad, Quality Manager, PCSIR, Ross Mamon, Quality Manager, Efroze Chemical Industries and Professor Dr S. Khaqan Hasan, Dawood University of Health Sciences.
They said that due to the lack of Consumer Protection Laws and its enforcement encouraging counterfeiters to market substandard food, beverages and medicines at domestic and international markets playing major role to tarnish country's image across the globe.
Speakers cited that government of neighbouring country had given full support to their consumers on account of consumer protection and promulgated its Consumer Protection Act in 1986 and established separate ministry to deal consumer affairs.
They said that over 2000 consumer courts were in India, which deals approximately 0.5 million consumer complaints annually, providing speedy justice and redress to consumer complaints within 30 days.
In every country, consumers are at the core of all business operations and their interests have to be kept paramount. However, in Pakistan manufacturers are playing with the health and lives of the consumers without fear of punishment.
There are over 300 brands of cooking oil and bottled water available in the markets while only 16 cooking oil manufacturers, 60 water bottlers, two biscuit manufacturers and a one carbonated drinks manufacturer were registered with PSQCA, they informed.
The role of accredited conformity assessment bodies in the international trade is become important to improve the country's image besides discouraging the production of substandard quality products, which are highly being marketed. They hoped that the establishment of assessment bodies would facilitate genuine producers, exporters, regulators and consumers at maximum besides spreading awareness about lookalike products.