TRUSTED SMART PRODUCTS FOR A BETTER DIGITAL WORLD

ON March 15, World Consumer Rights Day was celebrated worldwide.  There are several large and well-endowed consumer bodies in the world.  For example, in the United States of America, their consumer bodies were able to field a serious candidate to contest for the Presidency of the United States.  India has a large and well-respected consumer association which has a number of publications to its credit.

But the most known consumer body in the world is Consumer International to which nearly 100 countries are affiliated and which is based In England.  The Guyana Consumers Association is affiliated to Consumer International (CI)  and it is under the auspices of CI that World Consumer Rights Day is celebrated.

Consumer International keeps in close contact with national consumer organizations and assists in making programs for World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD) which would include the content of public presentations, posters and other such promotional ideas.

The theme for the year is fully explained and since it would have been relevant to all countries, it would be applicable everywhere and would be a process of improving the lives of consumers.  Consumer organizations, worldwide, communicate with each other and exchange ideas and at WCRD a sense of deeper fraternity envelops them and CI  encourages such contacts which strengthen the Consumer Movement.  As part of this fraternal contact, every two years a world Consumer Conference is held.  This year’s World Conference will be held in Portugal.

Consumer Associations and Consumerism as we know them today first emerged in the early years of the 20th century.  Western countries, in the 18th and 19th centuries, had experienced their Industrial Revolutions and thrown up a powerful and able capitalist or “bourgeois” class who produced goods and services in quantities and availability not known before in Human Civilization.  Both the workers and the consumers were in danger of being exploited by this capitalist class;  the workers by being paid low wages and being put to work in dangerous and unhealthy conditions and the consumers by being charged higher prices or being supplied with poor quality goods.

In the early years of the Industrial Revolution, there were no organizations that could provide an outlet for various grievances and this naturally resulted in conflicts with such groups as the Luddites in England who destroyed industrial machines or the saboteurs in other European countries who threw their sabots (wooden shoes) into the machines and disabled them,  Fortunately, trade unionism came about to give an outlet to workers’ grievances and various consumer activities, notably the Cooperative Movement, came to be used as an outlet for consumer grievances.

By the last quarter of the 19th century, it was clearly realized that the emergence of trade unionism and various movements to protect consumers prevented violent responses and even revolution and brought about social stability which was in the interest of the property-owning classes and indeed everyone else.  Accordingly, when modern Consumerism and Consumer Associations emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, there was no bitter hostility against them since it was realized that Consumerism was able to extend competition, ensure better quality of goods and bring about satisfied customers, all of which were in the interest of the business classes as well as of the consumers.

In Guyana, there are four main consumer bodies, the Guyana Consumers Association, the Consumer Department of the Ministry of Business led by Ms Cheryl Tinnis, the Competition and Consumer Commission led by Ms Dawn Holder and the Consumer Advisory Bureau.  They work very closely together and support each other’s activities in the interest of the consumer community.  At last WCRD, the activities were largely educational mainly reminding consumers of their rights. addressing consumer complaints and above all insisting the consumers do not compromise with the principle of ‘Value for Money’.

Each year WCRD focuses on an issue of universal consumer concern and this year’s theme is “A better digital world – Trusted Smart Products”.  More than half of the world’s population use smart products including smartphones, though the actual instruments in use number 23 billion or three times the world’s population.

With such a large portion of the Earth’s population being in the Digital World, it is necessary that their privacy and security be protected and they use systems which are safe and fair.  Consumer bodies in every country would, therefore, be approaching Governments and the Industry with a programme or agenda to achieve these goals.  Among the main points of that agenda would be:-

1. Consumers should have access to an affordable high quality, high-speed instant connection to enable them to take up the opportunities brought about by the “Internet of Things Technology”.

2. Consumers’ connected products with basic security as standard and updates should be provided for a reasonable period after sale so that hackers can’t access consumers’ data or alter the functionality of the product.

3. Consumers’ data and privacy protection rights must be properly protected to address harms such as discriminatory practices, invasive marketing, loss of privacy and security breaches.

4. Connected products should abide by interoperable and compatible device and software standards to avoid lock-in effects and enhance consumers’ ability to easily compare and switch providers.

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