The Barbados Fair Trading Commission (FTC) has pivoted from a stance of education to one of firm enforcement, in response to a trend of multiple Consumer Protection Act violations by multiple businesses on the island.
This was signalled by Chief Executive Officer of the FTC, Dr Marsha Atherley-Ikechi, in a recent interview conducted by the Public Affairs Department.
Dr Atherley-Ikechi revealed that though in the past, the commission would first lean on the side of education and training for businesses who were caught in breach of the Act, that has since changed, with strict enforcement now taking its place and particularly with repeat offenders.
“We first start by seeking to counsel the business owners, pointing out the areas where there has been a breach, indicating whether we believe it is a persistent situation, but we have moved from a stance of education and public awareness to one of enforcement and that has been signalled across all three divisions of the commission in recent times.
“For example in Consumer Protection we have moved to do undertakings, and an undertaking is essentially an agreement between the entity that has breached the Consumer Protection Act and the commission for systems and policies and procedures to be put in place to ensure that those breaches do not continue going forward.”
Dr. Atherley-Ikechi noted that generally, and especially over the last year, the FTC would have received repeated complaints on specific businesses on the island, on areas such as service quality issues, the rate of price fluctuations, and misleading advertising, especially in the area of pharmaceuticals and natural health remedies.
“Pharmaceuticals was one sector that we were particularly concerned about, because persons are advertising products that are expected to offer certain results, but it is not grounded in science. Customers have the reasonable expectation that when they buy a product that has been advertised to offer x, y, or z, that it does in fact offer x, y, or z.”
The CEO further outlined that recently, online businesses have also caught the eye of the commission.
“Our concern at this point is moving towards online services because we recognize that the legislation necessarily does not speak to that in its full state. Legislation obviously often lags behind the technology and that is something that we are looking at reviewing so that we can advocate for an amendment to the legislation to allow it to be fit for purpose.
Dr. Atherley-Ikechi made it clear that though the FTC has not taken businesses to court in recent times because it is time-consuming and costly, the commission will not shun doing so if circumstances warrant such a move.
“We’ve not taken persons to the law courts, that is an avenue that we can pursue but that has not happened to date. That is not to say that it will not happen because we have signalled enforcement and that to my mind is the ultimate stage of enforcement.”
