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How Vietnamese consumers’ interests are protected?
From July 1, 2008, the Law on Products and Commodities Quality Management took effect. However, the majority of Vietnamese consumers do not know that there is such a law that helps their interests.
Problems
The survey by the Vietnam Association of Standards and Customer Protection, which was conducted across the country in 2008, showed that nearly half of Vietnamese consumers do not know what rights they have. The other consumers said they know about their rights, but said that the rights could not help protect their interests.
The law stipulates that in case consumers purchase out-of-date commodities or commodities with unclear origins, they have the right to take legal proceedings against the producers or suppliers and ask for protection by the laws. The distributors have the responsibility of compensating for the buyers’ health damages if they deliberately sell low quality products.
However, in fact, the law has not helped consumers much in protecting their interests. Article 58 of the law stipulates that the petitioners have to pay for testing products and examining products’ quality, work that serves the dispute settlements.
Meanwhile, Nguyen Van Cuong, Senior Expert from the Ministry of Justice, said that in many countries in the world, when consumers take legal proceedings against low quality products, they do not have to pay for the testing of the products they complain about, while the responsibility must be undertaken by producers.
Due to the legal provision, Vietnamese consumers do not bring cases to the court, since ‘while the grass grows, the horse starves,’ or because they are not capable of spending time and money to follow lawsuits.
Waiting, the only solution
Analysts have warned that customers’ interest protection will become a hot issue in 2009, when Vietnam opens the retail market widely to domestic and foreign retailers.
How have been Vietnamese consumers protected?
At the central level, there exists the Consumers Protection Committee under the Competition Admistration Department (CAD) under the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Vu Thi Bach Nga, Head of the committee, said that the main job of the committee is to mediate involved parties, because the committee does not have the function of imposing punishment.
The Vietnam Association of Standards and Consumer Protection now has representatives in 30 out of 63 provinces and cities, but its main function is also mediating involved parties.
CAD said that the department is compiling a draft law on consumer protection and is going to open the draft for collecting suggestions from people. And while state management agencies are busy compiling the draft for submission to the National Assembly, consumers have no other choice than… waiting.
VietNamNet, TBKTVN
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