The Consumer Protection Act is being made more consumer-friendly

Inaugurating the 24th meeting of the Central Consumer Protection Council (CCPC) yesterday in New Delhi, minister for consumer affairs, food and public distribution and agriculture Sharad Pawar, said, "We are in the process of bringing about further amendments to the Consumer Protection Act. The proposed amendments would make the Act even more dynamic, responsive and consumer friendly," he said.

The members of the CCPC include the ministers in-charge of consumer affairs from the states of each of the five regions in the country, an administrator of a union territory, secretaries of departments of consumer affairs at the centre, as well as some states and representatives of consumer organisations. The membership to CCPC has been reduced from an unwieldy 150 to a more manageable 35 to take bring in a more issue-based focus.

The Pawar  said that the Planning Commission and ministry of finance have provided adequate budgetary allocation for implementing important schemes for strengthening the infrastructure of consumer fora and a project for computerisation and computer networking of the various consumer forums in the country, called ''Confonet'' was being executed by the National Informatics Centre on a turnkey basis.

Under this project, started in 2004-05, all the consumer fora are being computerised and networked. Till date, the National Cinsumer Commission, 34 state commissions and 593 district fora have been provided with computer hardware and software to bring them on the network.

Under another scheme, called "integrated project on consumer protection" financial assistance is being extended to states and union territories to supplement their efforts in strengthening infrastructure of the various consumer forums. So far, 21 eligible states have received of Rs73.82 crores as fiunding under this scheme, in addition to Rs72 crore that had given to the states under one-time grant to strengthen the infrastructure of consumer forums. The central government has also provided around Rs195 crore for strengthening the infrastructure of various consumer forums.

Pawar also said that a a bilateral project under Indo-German inititiativewas currently under implementation. Under this project, the states of Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan have been selected on pilot basis for implementing the project related to consumer protection and Madhya Pradesh and NCT of Delhi had been selected on a pilot basis for implementing the project related to legal metrology activities to provide and attune best practices on consumer information, advise and complaint redressal.

This project would also initiate an effective and efficient legal metrology system. With this objective, legal metrology laboratories are being upgraded by state of art equipments by the German partner.

Pawar disclosed that a comprehensive legal metrology bill was also under consideration to replace the Standards of Weights and Measures Act, 1976, and the Standards of Weights and Measures (Enforcement) Act, 1985.

He said that the proposed law would further simplify the requirements of weights and measures in inter-state trade, optimum utilisation of existing legal metrology infrastructure in the country. Other objective this legislation would fulfil is provide for personnel who are better attuned to the ever changing requirements, to handle the subject of legal metrology in the states / union territories.

The minister also said that the formation of an organisation like the National Consumer Protection Authority as a proactive body empowered to take suo-moto action to better protect the interests of the consumers in general was also under consideration. He informed the members that an umbrella framework for national consumer initiatives, to provide the general framework for consumer welfare in the government was also being deliberated.