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The law closest to resembling a consumer protection act was the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1970 enacted when Bangladesh was still part of erstwhile Pakistan. A similar act with the same name led to the MRTP Commission in India which played a vital role in the development of consumer protection in India. Pakistan developed a commission under the same MRTP Act. However, although mandated under the law, no commission was set up by Bangladesh, perhaps because the law was passed at a time of war with Pakistan.
Recently, the Consumer Rights Protection Act, 2009 (“CRPA, 2009”) has been enacted although with little sign of enforcement yet. Rules for the operation of the Act have only been madein 2013. However, significantly, Bangladesh’s first Competition Act has been enacted in 2012, which provides for a Competition Commission that is yet to be formed.
The CRPA, 2009 provides protection of consumer rights and also to prevent any acts against consumer right and interest and other relevant issues. The CRPA, 2009 is organized into 7 (seven) chapters and a total of 82 sections. The Act mainly deals with the obligations of "economic operators" and products safety. It enjoins state organs to punish the offenses of economic operators who violate consumer rights and interests. It provides for various actions to be taken by the respective ministries against the production of products or services that are likely to induce grave or imminent dangers. The CRPA, 2009 also sets out comprehensive procedures to be followed by inspection agents to ensure the quality and safety of products (goods and services). It also allows for the establishment of a specialized institution to be in charge of fraud repression and inspections of imported and exported goods.
However, a significant criticism of the Act is that it is mostly an administrative one and not one based on protection of consumer rights. To start with, despite the name of the act, “consumer rights” are not defined or listed, although a list of practices are termed as “anti-consumer rights practices”. The Act mostly concerns itself with the composition of the Council and the Directorate. Although it fulfils one function of a consumer law, which is to establish an institution tasked with consumer protection, it does little to be called a “citizen’s guide” as it does not define their rights a consumers and not empowers them to participate in the enforcement of those rights.
Another important criticism forwarded is that the CPRA, 2009 does not provide standard international precepts of strict liability and to prevent liability from being negated through contractual provisions and to effectively protect the rights of the consumers. There is no provision in the CPRA, 2009 on unfair conduct or unfair contract terms to better ensure the safety of Bangladesh consumers in relation to services liability. We can argue that the act should be rights based defining the rights of the consumer, rather making another bureaucratic mechanism which can promote corruption and be largely ineffective.
Redress is one of the very important rights which include the right to receive compensation for misrepresentation of shoddy goods or unsatisfactory services and the availability of acceptable forms of legal aid or redress for small claims wherever necessary. In India, the Consumer Protection Act, 1996 with the specific purpose of protecting consumers’ rights and providing a simple quasi-judicial dispute resolution system for resolution of consumers complaints. Under COPRA, three-tier quasi-judicial machinery at the National, State and District levels has been established.
However, in Bangladesh CRPA does not allow either the Council or the Directorate created under the law to receive complaints from consumers. This is an uncommon feature for a consumer protection law. Most consumer laws allow receipt of complaints directly from the consumers under some institutional mechanism or the other. The Bangladeshi Act provides only for redress in the usual criminal and civil courts. As per the CPRA 2009, no complaint can be entertained by the Court without endorsement of the Director General of the Consumer Rights Protection Department. Therefore, only competent government officers are entitled to institute a case against any violation of such laws.
The CRPA, 2009
Redress mechanisms and institutional capacity