The problems of consumers are under the control of the state

On August 12, 2021, a board was held at the Ministry of Trade and Integration of the Republic of Kazakhstan under the leadership of Minister Bakhyt Sultanov.

Almas Abzhapparov, Acting Chairman of the Consumer Rights Protection Committee, made a report on the results of work for the first half of 2021. He said that the Committee had carried out a set of measures to improve the system of consumer rights protection.

Since January 1, 2021, a unified information system for consumer protection "e-tutynushy" has been introduced, which is designed for automatic reception, consideration and systematization of citizens ' appeals. After making purchases, citizens can leave a review or complaint about a product or company in it and track the status of processing an appeal through their Personal Account. The appeal will be considered without fail. The problem of this system is the low registration of business entities associated with the voluntary nature of their registration in it.

The Committee and its territorial divisions conduct large-scale explanatory work among business entities on connecting to this system.

The speaker noted that the statistics of appeals is growing every year due to the frequent violations of consumer rights. If more than 5.5 thousand citizens applied to the Committee for 6 months of 2020, more than 8 thousand complaints have already been received for the same period of 2021. At the same time, the growth rate of appeals was 144%. Over the past 2 years, more than 47 thousand appeals from consumers have been considered in the central and local executive bodies.

According to A. Abzhapparov, the growing dissatisfaction of the population with the quality of goods and services is confirmed not only by statistics, but also by a sociological study conducted for 2020.

The results of the conducted sociological research on consumer rights protection for 2020, which covered about 17,000 people in all regions of the Republic of Kazakhstan, showed that consumer rights are most often violated in such areas as:

First. Medical services. 45.9% of respondents are not satisfied with this area.

Second. Railway transport. 43.2% are not satisfied with this area.

The third. Intercity / international road transport (taxi). 42.0% are not satisfied with this area.

Fourth. Educational services. 41.6% are not satisfied with this area.

Fifth. Communication services (mobile). 35.9% are not satisfied with this area.

Almas Abdumutalipovich stressed that the problems in the field of consumer rights protection require new legislative changes. In this regard, in 2021, the Committee began to develop the 2nd package of amendments to the Law. The Project Concept developed by the Committee was discussed at the first meeting of the Interdepartmental Council for Consumer Protection on June 25, 2021, and on June 30, the Concept was posted for discussion on the portal of open NPAs.

"The progressive statistics of violations of consumer rights leads to the conclusion about the creation of a single organization for the protection of consumer rights in Kazakhstan. This will allow us to rebuild the institute of associations on the principle of "from quantity to quality", ensure equal opportunities for all NGOs, protect consumer rights more effectively, and much more, " Almas Abzhapparov said in conclusion.