From Walter Ukaegbu, Abuja
The Consumer Protection Council (CPC) and the Association of Food, Beverage and Tobacco Employers (AFBTE), yesterday, agreed to raise a technical committee to develop a mutually-acceptable compensation code to address consumer abuse in the sector.
The decision to set up the technical committee was taken during the courtesy call of the association on the Director-General of CPC, Mr. Tunde Irukera, in Abuja.
Irukera said the code would modify the attitude and responses of the 100 industry members of the association to complaints of aggrieved consumers.
He said, “The reality is that we have an aggressive consumer protection agency to protect the consumer and we have a responsibility to protect the consumer, to the extent of coming up with an approach that is in the interest of those consumers.
“So having to use a compensation policy as an example, if a consumer were to complain about a product, claiming that it made him ill, we could obviously come together and work with an acceptable methodology that would be fairer and more predictable across the board.
“I have found that professional and trade associations like this, when they are very strong, are perhaps the best partners because you can affect consumers far more when you come to some understanding with the association and they go back to enforce it within themselves than dealing with each member.”