The quality of goods and services is declining, consumer literacy is growing: Committee on consumer protection announced the results of its work

Over 30 thousand requests were received during the year

On January 12 of this year, a board meeting was held at the Ministry of Trade and Integration of the Republic of Kazakhstan with the participation of First Vice-Minister of Trade and Integration of the Republic of Kazakhstan Arman Shakkaliyev and Head of the Begmanov Askar Abdugalievich staff. The state agency summed up the results of the past year and discussed the upcoming tasks.

Askar Tynysbekov, Chairman of the Committee for Consumer Protection of the MTI of the Republic of Kazakhstan, made a report on the work done. He noted that together with the non-governmental sector, maximum efforts have been made to ensure comprehensive protection of consumer rights.

In the 12 months of 2022, the Committee received 30,167 appeals. Their growth rate compared to last year was 120%. Thanks to the measures carried out, 786 million tenge was returned to consumers. This is 216.5% more than in 2021, when 363.02 million tenge was returned to consumers.

In addition, more than 13.5 thousand citizens were provided with legal assistance, about 13.1 thousand appeals were satisfied, 3,071 were redirected according to the competence.

«An analysis showed that many consumer rights were violated in the sphere of rosnichnich torgovli (47.6%), B. E. M. services (19%), fluctronic commerce (9%), LCG (5.6%) and other industries (4.3%). In this department, 146 tests were carried out in the VA». - voiced statistician Askar Stanislavovich. – «On itogam check-C administrative responses attracted in video warnings - 99 subjects, in video shoot - 32 subjects».

He also said that violations in areas regulated by other government agencies have increased, where the number of appeals in only 6 months of 2022 has increased to 47.2 thousand, exceeding the annual figure of 2021.

Claim and claim – legal instruments

The Chairman of the Committee also spoke about the claim activities carried out on 102 appeals, including 35 consumer claims, the Consumer Protection Department acted as third parties.

For example, the Turksib court of Almaty satisfied the 6th claim of the department against the airline JSC «Bek Air». The total number of protected consumers amounted to 1,850 people, the amount of the claim exceeded 113 million tenge.

In the East Kazakhstan region, the joint actions of the Consumer Protection Department and the Consumer Protection Society «Amanat» helped in court to protect the rights of 162 owners of an apartment building with a claim amount of over 308 million tenge.

The Department of Kostanay region defended the rights of more than a thousand consumers of the city of Rudny for the illegally approved tariff for individuals for solid waste removal services.

With the assistance of the Department of Astana, the court satisfied 10 million claims of residents of one of the capital's residential complexes.

In Atyrau region, litigation is underway with JSC «Kcell» and JSC «Atyrau Thermal Power Plant» in defense of the rights and legitimate interests of an indefinite circle of citizens.

The Chairman of the Consumer Protection Committee touched upon the situation with complaints about electronic trading platforms.

«In 2022, several meetings were held with representatives of «Kaspi-Shop and Wildberries, as a result of which a special e-mail was created for the Committee and departments for consumer Protection. The issue of interaction between the Committee touched upon the situation and Wildberries is being worked out by creating a separate channel of interaction», - Askar Stanislavovich reported.

He also presented a rating of the activities of territorial departments. Thus, the West Kazakhstan, Kostanay, and Karaganda regions showed high performance.

Atyrau, Kyzylorda and Almaty regions received low scores.

Public opinion

In order to reveal the public view of the situation in the sphere of consumer protection, a sociological study was conducted in 2022. The speaker mentioned this in his report.

«Of all respondents surveyed, 39.3% complained about the poor quality of medical care, 42.9% - Internet service providers, 30.7% - urban public transport services. The annual increase in consumer complaints is associated with the weak work of state agencies to identify and eliminate root problems, areas regulated by them, as well as the improvement of the legal culture of consumers», - commented A.Tynysbekov.

He also named another reason for public discontent – the low applicability of the developed and current 3,000 national standards of quality, safety of products and services in certain sectors of the economy, in which the number of complaints is increasing.

Last year, the Committee, together with the Committee for Technical Regulation and Metrology and the State Standard, launched monitoring of the use of existing national standards of sectoral government agencies, as well as the development of new national standards that improve the quality of life of the population.

For the same purpose, the process of receiving and reviewing consumer complaints was automated, and the e-Tutynushy information system is integrated with e-Otinish. Kazakhstanis have already appreciated its usefulness. Over the past year, through the EIS, more than 2.4 thousand appeals were received from citizens, of which 1.5 thousand to businesses and 0.9 thousand to subjects of pre-trial settlement. 8.5 thousand consumers, 300 business entities, 18 public associations have registered in the system.

Legislative innovations

The Chairman of the Committee recalled that since last year, the development of the 2nd package of legislative amendments to protect the rights of consumers has been intensified.

All the current articles have been worked out in it, the structure has been changed.

Among the main initiatives: the introduction of the institution of the Ombudsman, the extension of the basic principles of the Law to all areas of services provided by business entities. It provides for the restitution of the norm of civil liability in the form of a fine imposed by the court on business entities that refuse to eliminate violations at the pre-trial stage, in favor of public institutions for consumer protection.

These and other innovations of the second package of amendments will contribute to improving the well-being of Kazakhstanis.

At the end of the report, the Chairman of the Committee announced the Committee's plans for 2023, including work on the draft Law «On Consumer Protection», as well as increasing the level of efficiency of state regulation of consumer protection to 72.3%.

The board meeting was attended by public figures in the field of consumer protection, who made a number of proposals for cooperation with MTI.

Svetlana Romanovskaya, Chairman of the Board of the National League of Consumers of Kazakhstan, proposed to hold a working seminar of MTI with the Association for the Protection of Consumer Rights on the preparation of upcoming state social order competitions. In addition, she drew attention to the current problem of conducting independent examinations for some goods.

Denis Stepantsev, Managing Director of the Digital Kazakhstan Association, focused on the large-scale legislative work carried out last year by the Consumer Protection Committee together with public associations.

Zhasulan Aitmaganbetov, Chairman of the Republican Consumer Association of Kazakhstan, noted the following: «We have a number of problems, in fact, which in my opinion have not been solved. This is in particular the fact that the sphere of consumer protection still has infringement of rights in front of the sphere of opponents - entrepreneurs».

In turn, the President of the public association «Consumer Protection and Competition Development in Atyrau region» Balzhan Dosmukhambetova supported the point of view of her colleagues and showed an active position on improving consumer protection activities.

Summing up the results of the board, the First Vice-Minister of Trade and Integration of the Republic of Kazakhstan gave relevant instructions to those present. He said that the role of public associations of consumers is extremely important in the implementation of the state policy on consumer protection. And only together can we achieve success in this important area for the country.