PANAJI
Goa will soon have flying squads drawn from officials of the Civil Supplies, Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), legal metrology and commercial taxes department for real time action in protecting consumer rights.
The decision was taken by the State Consumer Protection Council at its first meeting held on Monday and chaired by Civil Supplies Minister Ravi Naik.
“Flying squads will be set up to protect rights of consumers. Many people get cheated and sometimes they are not even aware of their rights as consumers," Naik said while speaking to the media after the meeting.
According to noted Consumer Rights activist, Roland Martins, who is a member of the council and attended Monday's meeting, the flying squads will also come in handy to protect the rights of tourists who are cheated by fly-by-night businesses.
Tourists who are on short stays in the State usually do not bother to escalate matters and file complaints in cases of violation of their consumer rights and these flying squads will come in handy in their case, Martins said.
The council, meanwhile, also decided to form a sub-committee which will deal with chalking out a plan to create more awareness among the citizenry on consumer rights and the procedures to be followed to lodge complaints and seek redressal.
Another decision taken at the council meeting was to hold training sessions at all Consumer Protection Commissions (courts) -- district and State -- on the processes to be followed to e-file complaints before these commissions.
Meanwhile, Naik said, the civil supplies department will up its internal systems to ensure quality control especially related to the quality of rice in its many godowns distributed through the PDS system.
He said, civil supplies inspectors will be held accountable and acted against if cases of inferior quality rice including maggot-infested grains are discovered.
