Civil Supplies Minister Gangula Kamalakar has exhorted the department officials to take steps to create awareness among the consumers about their rights and relevant legislations enacted for the protection of consumers’ interests.
Consumers were unable the get justice due to lack of awareness about the Acts in force, and the officials concerned should work to instil confidence among them by creating awareness about various provisions incorporated in the Acts to ensure protection of their rights. The Minister was speaking at a meeting organised in connection with the National Consumers Day here on Tuesday.
The Minister stressed the need for educating consumers about their rights and responsibilities as such awareness would go a long way in protecting their rights. The Central Government had recently enacted The Consumer Protection Act-2019 which would cover issues relating to online sales, teleshopping, multi-marketing as well as direct sales under its jurisdiction and would ensure stringent punishments including jail term, not just penalties, on the firms/individuals found guilty of cheating consumers. The officials concerned should therefore take steps to create awareness among consumers on the new Act as well as various provisions incorporated in it to safeguard their interests.
Civil Supplies Corporation chairman Mareddy Srinivas Reddy said enactment of legislations alone would not help protect the interests of consumers, but their effective implementation would be key to achieve the desired results. Civil Supplies commissioner P. Satyanarayana Reddy recalled that there were different forums for consumers at national, State and district levels to represent their grievances. Unlike the courts, the grievance redressal mechanism put in place was delivering justice in shorter span of time and involved low costs.
District consumers’ forums were functioning in 12 districts across the State while the grievance redressal cell established at Civil Supplies Bhavan witnessed registering of 1,530 cases so far, of which, 1,332 were resolved in favour of consumers. Telangana Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission president M.S.K. Jaiswal said 6,955 cases had been registered with the commission so far and 3,813 had been resolved while 91,309 cases of the 96,502 registered with 12 district forums had been resolved.
