JAMAICA IS ranked high among its CARICOM counterparts in preparing consumers for the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) which is scheduled to come on stream in 2005, according to Angela Manning, chief executive officer of the Consumer Affairs Commission (CAC).Mrs. Manning has noted that Jamaica was first to draft legislation for the protection of consumers and that several CARICOM countries had modelled their laws off the Jamaican proposal.
But, while some of these countries have gone ahead and passed legislation, Jamaica's Consumer Protection Act was still pending. Mrs. Manning said that she expected the legislation to be passed during the current legislative year.
She pointed out that Jamaica's CAC was the first within CARICOM to launch its website and to establish an online complaint service. This is to "allow persons to make complaints from anywhere in the world, 24 hours per day, seven days per week".
The CEO said this service would prove invaluable when unrestricted movement of goods and services was allowed under the CSME and the volume of activities among member countries increased. She reasoned that the issue of redress would be significantly greater at that time.
SECOND AFTER TRINIDAD
At a recent Caribbean Consumer Conference in St. Lucia, Mrs. Manning pointed out that Jamaica was ranked second after Trinidad and Tobago in having structures in place to ensure consumers' rights when the CSME took effect in 2005.
Trinidad has already passed its consumer protection law, so has Barbados, which was ranked third. In descending order, the others are St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Suriname. Some CARICOM countries, including Guyana, are still awaiting draft legislation, Mrs. Manning said. She added that the aim of participants attending the Caribbean Consumer Conference was to get other CARICOM states actively involved and prepared by 2005, when the next conference would be held in Barbados.
Mrs. Manning pointed out that the 2005 conference was important, as the Free Trade Areas of the Americas (FTAA) and the CSME were scheduled to come on stream in that year. By then, she said, a number of issues would have surfaced. As a result, Mrs. Mannings said all CARICOM states have been asked to expedite the passage of the consumer protection legislation, "so that consumers would have protection across the board".
