A new Consumer Affairs Council

A new Consumer Affairs Council has been recently appointed. The only two persons who had kept their place on the Council are Mr Adrian Muscat Inglott and Mr Anthony Camilleri. The latter is the representative of the business community on the Council. Mr Muscat Inglott, on the other hand, is known for his commitment to consumer affairs and I always held Mr Muscat Inglott in high esteem. In the past, Mr Muscat Inglott and I had worked on several campaigns. Once convinced of an issue in favour of consumers Mr Muscat Inglott will persist until the goals set are reached. I hope that the present Consumer Affairs Council will have a successful term of office to benefit consumers.

I hope that this new Council will be more focused than the previous one. One of the main functions of this Council is to be a watchdog on the Consumer and Competition Division. For one reason or another, the previous Council had found great difficulty in securing the necessary information to ensure that the Division is operating efficiently.

Anther problem was the lack of resources to monitor even the most important developments which were taking place in this area both locally and internationally especially within the EU. In fact, the Consumer Affairs Council was conspicuous by its absence. The only event which had been kept alive, and also could be considered as a success, was the annual conference which dealt with a topic which either was effecting Maltese society or was a new development being implemented for the first time on the Island.

For a time, given the lack of research in the area of consumer affairs, the Council also tried to get itself involved in researching certain issues. However, in spite of the several attempts, it failed, again, because of lack of resources. This is an important function as policy, one of the functions of the Consumer Affairs Council, needs to be founded on research.

One difficulty that has arisen is the tension that was created between the Consumer Affairs Council and the Consumers’ Association. This happened because some within the Council played in the hands of others who had the intention of trying to control the Association. I sincerely hope that the Consumer Affairs Council will go out of its way to help the only consumers’ association we have, rather than create problems.
One last point. I hope that the Consumers and Competition Division does not look at the Council as a competitor but rather as a source of inspiration. This was the main source of all problems. The Division has a phobia for looking at others working in same field as competitors. This was again the source why the relations between the Division and the Association were never close in recent years. With regards to the Council, this attitude restricted the well-functioning of the Council as the latter did not have an independent source of funds but always depended on the Division. This in fact inverted the relationship that was supposed to be between the Division and the Council. As I said in the beginning, the Council is supposed to be the watchdog of the Division. But the dependence of funds made the Council dependent on the Division for its functioning.

I sincerely hope that the above problems are solved to ensure that the Council functions to the benefit of the local consumer and not just remain a useless structure.