Need to fill the gap in consumer protection work

Deputy Minister of Justice Nguyen Thanh Tinh. *Photo: BTP*

- Sir, recently, the situation of counterfeit, fake, poor quality goods... has been very painful, complicated, especially in essential products such as: Medicine, milk, food, causing serious impacts on the health of consumers. This problem is becoming more and more sophisticated. Is it time to improve the institutions, policies and laws on protecting consumer rights?

- That's right, besides the achieved results, the implementation of Directive No. 30-CT/TU of the Central Party Secretariat on strengthening the Party's leadership and the State's management responsibility for protecting consumer rights still reveals some shortcomings and limitations.

I think that the current context poses an urgent issue of perfecting legal policies on consumer rights protection in order to implement the Party's policies, including Resolution No. 66-NQ/TU on innovation in law-making and enforcement to meet the requirements of national development in the new era; Resolution No. 68-NQ/TU on private economic development and recently Resolution No. 72-NQ/TU on a number of breakthrough solutions to strengthen the protection, care and improvement of people's health; at the same time, protect constitutional rights such as property rights, inviolability of life and health, contributing to raising legal awareness and the spirit of respect for the law, building a socialist rule-of-law state of Vietnam.

- As a legal gatekeeper, what does the Ministry of Justice think is the biggest loophole in consumer protection today?

- Currently, in legal relationships, consumers are always at a disadvantage, even "alone" compared to businesses, even when they are fully aware. Businesses, for their own interests and profits, can disregard the law and "bully" consumers through the production and trading of counterfeit, fake, poor quality, and expired goods...

Meanwhile, sanctions for violations affecting rights, health, life, etc. are not strong enough to deter, especially for essential goods and services and those that take advantage of vulnerable consumers.

Secondly, the rapid development of science and technology, especially digital economy and e-commerce, has created new space for development, but the downside is that it creates another channel for consumers to be scammed if they are not equipped with enough knowledge. When problems arise or consumers want to reflect and make recommendations on the quality of goods traded via e-commerce, consumers still face many difficulties and challenges.

Market management forces inspected a business establishment in Hong Ha ward (Hanoi) and discovered a large quantity of foreign-produced food without invoices or documents. *Photo: DMS*

- Can you share specifically about the need to improve institutions and legal policies on protecting consumer rights?

- First of all, after 5 years of implementing Directive No. 30-CT/TU, besides the remarkable results, the implementation of the Directive has revealed a number of limitations and difficulties.

For example, some current legal regulations are not suitable for practice, requiring amendments and supplements in accordance with innovative thinking on law-making; a segment of consumers and businesses have not yet proactively learned and voluntarily complied with the law on consumer rights protection; coordination between ministries, branches, localities and socio-political organizations in protecting consumer rights is sometimes still lacking in synchronization and not really tight, leading to the effectiveness not reaching the optimal level... has been posing many new and complex challenges for the work of protecting consumer rights.

Through preliminary monitoring by the Ministry of Justice, the responsibilities of ministries and branches in this work are still unclear. Currently, the Ministry of Industry and Trade is responsible for the overall protection of consumer rights, but in addition, there are responsibilities of other specialized ministries such as the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment, the Ministry of Health, etc.

In particular, the implementation of the two-level local government model requires reviewing and clearly defining the authority and responsibility of the People's Committee at the commune level in organizing the implementation of regulations on consumer rights protection. At the same time, it stipulates conditions to ensure effective implementation of state management on consumer rights protection at the grassroots level.

- Thank you very much, Deputy Minister!

Source: https://hanoimoi.vn/can-lap-lo-hong-ve-cong-toc-bao-ve-quyen-loi-nguoi-tieu-dung-716449.html