One of the reasons behind the growing poverty and price hike in Pakistan is the apathetic attitude of the ruling quarters regarding safeguarding the consumer rights.

In our society, the price of almost every commodity is on the run, because the policymakers are least concerned with the issues of the masses. Instead of protecting the rights of the poor masses, here both national and multi-national firms have been given a virtual free hand to maximize their profits at the cost of hapless consumers.

The seriousness of this issue could be gauged from the fact that a recent report of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that the banks in Pakistan and Colombia were on ‘top in the world’ in terms of earning huge profits. The banking sector in Pakistan is not the only exception, but the powerful nexus of traders and politicians in Pakistan has allowed almost every sector to fleece the public by making powerful cartels to make a quick windfall. The situation is worsened to such an extent that even the World Bank (WB) has to urge the Pakistan government to effectively check cartel formation in cement, banking, sugar, automobile and pharmaceutical sectors to save consumers from unchecked price hikes in the country.

The concept of consumer protection is considered as the foundation of ‘social welfare’ in all civilised countries. In these countries it is considered as the prime duty of the government to protect the interests of consumers. In fact the concept of consumer rights is inter-linked with democracy and freedom of judiciary. The profit hungry tycoons and multinationals always throng to the countries that have sham democracy and weak judiciaries.

In the civilised and democratic societies, the political parties have always a major role to play in safeguarding the consumer rights. The political parties are more concerned about the consumer rights, because a consumer is also a ‘voter’. No political party worth its salt could even think of ignoring the rights and interests of their voters. In the Western countries all big political parties run their special cells, sections, watchdog bodies and think tanks for the consumer rights.

In Pakistan, the political parties generally take their consumers for granted and are least concerned with their rights. Ironically, more violation of consumer rights could be seen during the tenures of the political parties who cried themselves hoarse for people and their rights. The real faces of such politicians claiming themselves as the champions of peoples’ rights are uglier as regards to consumer rights aspect.

During the last couple of decades, Pakistani people have suffered a lot economically due to blatant violation of consumer rights. Before the present wheat flour crisis, the country had braved the crises of sugar, cement and electricity. Powerful cartels having covert patronage of ruling quarters had made trillions of rupees from these crises. In recent past, when the sugar scandal was unearthed, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) was ordered not to probe into it, because a deep probe could lead to exposing many close aides of the ruling quarters. Similarly, the multi-billion-rupees stock exchange scandal was also hushed up for the very same reason. The recent scandal to allowing export of Pakistani wheat at cheaper rates and then importing it on almost double price is another example of a political culture where the consumer rights are not even at the lowest rung of the ladder of priorities of the rulers.

It is said that the rulers are not comfortable with the concept of the freedom of judiciary, as a free and assertive judiciary would not allow the vested interests to violate the rights of masses. The heroic verdict of the Supreme Court of Pakistan in the Pakistan Steel privatisation case could be cited an example in this regard.

Besides democracy, free judiciary, assertive media and pro-people political parties, a strong and vibrant civil society is also a must for the protection of consumer rights. The civil society is the platform from where a strong pressure could be exerted on the rulers and vested interests, so as to discourage them from fleecing the consumer. In Pakistan though there are some consumer rights bodies, but the majority of them are toothless. In fact some so-called consumer rights groups covertly work for the interests of powerful multinationals to discourage the indigenous industry. These groups always give more stress to ‘quality’, while ignore the factors of supply, competition, price and profit margin.

To help the culture of consumer rights taking deeper roots in the Pakistani society, it is necessary that the concept of ‘consumer rights accounting’ should be introduced here. The accounting, pricing and billing methods of a lot of firms working in Pakistan are shoddy, misleading and questionable. An electricity supply utility, even transfer the ‘bank charges’ to its consumers in its monthly bills, while a consumer has nothing to do about the contract between the bank and the particular utility. The bill collection is an administrative expense and the responsibility of the utility firms, but some firms transfer it to their consumers, which is nothing but a plain fleecing of consumers.