Africa-Press – Cape verde. Adeco board member, Nelson Faria, said today that most consumers in Cape Verde know their rights, but more pedagogy is needed because there are always new consumers who need clarification and updating. On World Consumer Day, Adeco highlighted not only the defense of consumer rights, but also awareness of their duties.
“We intend to strengthen these intervention programs, whether through physical proximity and direct actions with the public, or also through actions via the means of communication that we have available, namely radio, television, newspapers, social networks, because they are also a vehicle of communication today with great reach. We intend to use all these spheres to continue communicating”, he explained, considering, however, that much of the pedagogy they do, in order to be absorbed and assimilated, necessarily lacks the interest of consumers.
In this regard, Nelson Faria recalled that in addition to defending consumer rights, Adeco has also appealed to consumers’ awareness of their duties, namely the duty to inform themselves and seek appropriate information.
“Consumers must also be aware that many of their rights depend on duties of interest, information, collaboration, above all also duties related to ethics, respecting the solution of commitments, namely satisfying their own interests”, he observed, lamenting that “there is a public that likes to criticize often on social media, but who rarely deigns to formally complain”.
According to Nelson Faria, the Consumer Protection Association has been running a campaign to raise public awareness that, in addition to making a complaint through other means, the best way, with the aim of resolving the problem, is to formalize this complaint.
“In terms of numbers in 2023, we registered 42 complaints against 29 organizations, some are private companies, others are public organizations. But I see complaints from a perspective of also supporting the services and goods themselves to improve”, said the same source, who this year had 30 fewer complaints compared to 2022.
“The formalization of complaints has reduced. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t other organizations or that there wouldn’t be many more complaints”, argued Nelson Faria, indicating that Electra is the institution that consumers complain about most, but he highlighted that the company has accepted the complaints made and acted towards to resolve them.
The second entity, he added, is Hospital Baptista de Sousa and third place is occupied by the Kym Negoce group and Cabo Verde Airlines.
Because of this, said the director, Adeco encouraged a series of meetings with institutions, including the administration of Hospital Batista de Sousa, in São Vicente, and the Association of Chinese Businessmen in Cape Verde, with the aim of increasing collaboration among them and seek solutions to the problems presented by users.
“Our objective, as I said, is to mediate the consumption environment and make it conducive to better consumption of goods and services. If, on the one hand, we defend consumer rights, on the other, we also have to contact associations, companies, organizations that provide these goods and services, to ensure that they are also willing to defend and safeguard rights and interests. of consumers,” he said.
According to the same source, having this consumption environment and all participants clear about their roles, lucid, informed, will enable a healthy consumption environment, which benefits the consumer and increases the quality of the goods and services offered.
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