KATHMANDU, Sept 6: Although the Constitution has recognized consumers’ welfare under the fundamental right providing sufficient grounds to enforce effective measures to protect their rights, the government’s continued apathy to introduce necessary laws has left consumers helpless in the face of gross market anomalies.

Chairman of the Consumer Welfare Protection Forum Jyoti Baniya said the inordinate delay in formulating necessary laws by the local governments has created a problem in effective market inspection and monitoring. “In the absence of the laws, the market inspection being conducted by mayor, deputy mayor or high ranking government officials has failed to provide any relief to the consumers,” said Baniya, addressing a program on Friday.

The concern for consumers’ right protection started in Nepal some two and a half decades ago. The Constitution promulgated in 2015 has also sought to define the quality standards of all the consumable goods along with a provision of giving compensation to those who suffered from malpractices in the domestic market. “However, both of these provisions have not been enforced properly,” said Baniya.

Baniya said the market, however, has become largely unsafe for consumers as they are likely to be cheated in almost every now and then due to lack of government’s proactive initiatives to curb such practices. He pointed out the need to enforce Local Market Management Act as provisioned in the Constitution. 

Although almost five years have already passed since the new constitution was endorsed in 2015 and the local governments had their elected representatives a year later, only  a few of the total 753 local governments have so far introduced the Act. “Only seven municipalities out of 753 local governments have so far brought the Act online,” he said.

The local governments introducing the Act include Damak, Kalaiya, Bhimeshwor, Waling, Tansen, Birendranagar and Tikapur municipalities. The law enacted recently paves way for forming a powerful committee under leadership of the deputy mayor. 

The law delegates full authority to the committee to oversee almost all market related activities that include cross inspection, provision of selling points and budget management to conduct research and raise awareness among general people. Each of these municipalities are reported to have allocated up to Rs 5 million to carry out these activities.     

Providing importance to the market research in government policy interventions and commitment to check the ransom collection by the political parties from the local traders could help check the malpractices of cartel, price hike and selling of substandard products at the local market, according to Baniya.

 
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