17 March 2010
On paper, South Africans are amongst the most protected consumers in the world. This is a result of the
Consumer Protection Act which was signed into law on 24 April 2009 and comes into effect in October this year.
However the reality is that consumers need to be better informed and educated about their rights for this legislation to have a meaningful impact. This point was raised by
National Consumer Forum (NCF) chairman Thami Bolani, “A lack of knowledge about our rights remains the main challenge facing South Africa's consumers. Despite having so much 'cutting edge' legislation, we often fail to tell ordinary people about it, and so it is not implemented at grassroots level and many people don't benefit as they should”.
To address this issue, the NCF are planning to launch a national network of Access to Knowledge (A2K) centres across South Africa to empower consumers with knowledge. Bolani says, “Rather than us trying to extricate a consumer from a tangled problem, let us rather give them the tools to avoid the problem in the first place - or at least to fight their own battles if it comes to that.”
The centres will offer financial literacy training, debt counselling, entrepreneurship skills, health and nutrition education, and computer training. The first A2K centre was opened last month in the rural town of KwaMhlanga in Mpumalanga.
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