19 Jan 2022

The Competition and Consumer Authority (CCA) does not regulate commodity prices, its Director of Communications and Stakeholder Relations, Mr Gideon Nkala has said.
Giving a presentation on the Authority’s mandate to Ntlo ya Dikgosi on Tuesday, Mr Nkala said the market on its own was left to regulate prices and foster competition, which was good for the country as it could lead to economic growth, provide greater choice to consumers and also lead to better quality and pricing.
He said consumers generally bought where the price and quality suited them, thus regulating the two standards.
Mr Nkala admitted that low quality goods still found their way into the country, which contravened the rights of the consumer.
As such, he said the authority often undertook inspections, alongside other stakeholders to ascertain that goods sold to the public were of acceptable quality.
He said consumers were the largest group in an economy and therefore had to be protected from exorbitant prices, inferior products, unsafe products and inability to make informed choices.
Mr Nkala said the consumer protection law protected the rights of consumers from excesses of business, as it gave them rights to safety, information, choose, to be heard, to consumer education and to redress, among others.
He said due to budgetary constraints, nine of CCA offices had been closed after the restructuring exercise in 2019, therefore, consumers could only be assisted from Francistown and Gaborone. However, he explained that none of the employees lost their jobs owing to the exercise. Members of Ntlo Ya Dikgosi expressed misgivings on the closure of the offices, with the deputy chairperson, Kgosi Tshipe Tshipe saying the CCA would serve the public better if it had physical presence around the country.
He said having offices only in Gaborone and Francistown contributed to delays in addressing consumer complaints from other places and thus called on the authority to look into spreading its offices around the country as soon as the economy improved.
Other members of Ntlo ya Dikgosi complained that the CCA took long to address consumer complaints and that some shops had dominated the whole supply chain, which disadvantaged other Batswana from improving their livelihoods. ENDS