The administrative set-up for the protection of consumer rights is impressive. We have a fully-fledged department for Consumer Affairs; an extensive array of consumer rights; the establishment of a Consumers’ Council; quality service charters; and most of all a minister responsible for consumer protection.
Malta is a country rich in codification but very poor in implementing the same rules. The Water Services Corporation and Enemalta, which work in tandem to collect bills for commodity services, are perfect examples of consumer disrespect. The WSC is quick in informing its clients that f the meter is not transferred to the current user, the registered consumer has to foot the bill. This notification is couched in a manner as to make the reader believe that the Corporation is looking after his interest. In reality, it is throwing the responsibility of payment on the former and not the actual user of its services.
Consumer rights are conveniently forgotten when it comes to offer a service. Under one pretext or another, both in summer and in winter, we are faced with water and electricity cuts, being given the impression that the service provider is a small God to whom we should reverently bow without asking the question: why? To aggravate the situation, telephone lines are always engaged and it seems there is no one to attend consumer anguish. There is no reduction in bills when the tap goes dry or when the freezer cannot work due to an electricity cut.
The same applies to government departments. Your first chance of getting through is nearly impossible. After wasting so much precious time trying to contact someone in the department you are faced with funeral music asking you politely to wait even more. Then you are transferred to another section where the officer in charge takes note of your complaint. God only knows if and when your complaint is going to be addressed. But the water and electricity bills continue to flow, gaining intensity and volume each time you are blessed with one.
Government departments may have adopted charters, and may have advised us of our rights, but they are only empty promises.
The picture gets even blurred when it comes to requesting the help of certain police officers in certain police stations. Some officers do not even know how to answer a telephone call. You get the impression they are scolding you for nothing. The first thing that should be taught at the Police Academy is how the public is approached when seeking police assistance. Very often you are faced with a negative response. Policemen are adequately trained to cope with fieldwork but in the majority they lack a sense of civility and are not always at the forefront in helping John Citizen in his petty queries. The answer is very often: ‘This is a civil matter and you should not have called the police’.
However, in many instances crimes involving physical violence origin from petty civil matters. Prevention is not the sole prescription to medical science; it is a prerequisite of a civil society. And while addressing the issue it would be pertinent to point out that our police stations are not adequately equipped both in personnel and in facilities. It is government business to provide the necessary funds and the correct number of policemen in each station.
Consumer flogging finds also its source in dealing with certain commercial companies which do not have the slightest knowledge how to conduct a profession or business. Although some of them boast of a consumer service department (and advertise it with the product), it takes you years to reach the company: blocked telephone lines; musical interludes; transferred from one section to the other; and finally, there is no remedy to your complaint. The same happens if you need a spare part for your car. You have to wait for four to six weeks so that the importer would have enough time to bring your item with his monthly container. Not to mention inferior quality products (such as household goods), which are sold for good prices.
In recent years, property prices have gone mad, disturbing in no mean way the social fabric. Young families cannot carry the burden for long, leaving them frustrated and living miserably on what is left from their wages. As if these young couples are not consumers anymore.
We have a fine administrative set-up which is doing barely anything. Apart from the Consumer Affairs Tribunal, which has functioned in a comparatively effective way, the many other consumer departments, committees, councils and what not, have proved to be hollow bags with nothing to show. With all the money spent on these ghostly public entities, the public is still at the mercy of government departments dishing out acknowledgments without addressing the original complaint and certain commercial companies which are ignoring consumer satisfaction to the detriment of their own existence. The major reason for financial institutions’ success in Malta is the efficient way in which they operate and their unrelenting drive towards consumer satisfaction.
In the coming weeks we will be promised heaven on earth, but time and tide wait for no man, and the people will be asking about what the administration has been doing for the last twenty years. They invented jobs for the boys, paid out of the public coffers, but John Citizen is still finding it hard to obtain a decent response to his public needs and is being abused, if not flogged, by the same persons who feverishly compete for his spending.

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