Wes­ley Gib­bings

Caribbean tech­nocrats are hop­ing that a re­gion­al cross-bor­der con­sumer alert sys­tem for po­ten­tial­ly harm­ful prod­ucts can soon be a re­al­i­ty if Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) gov­ern­ments make a re­cent­ly-launched pro­gramme work. Un­der the sys­tem, non-food and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts can be with­drawn from Cari­com mar­kets and ac­tion tak­en to en­sure that re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ers ad­dress con­sumer safe­ty con­cerns. At first glance, one lead­ing lo­cal con­sumer ad­vo­cate thinks it's a great idea, but some coun­tries have been slow off the mark to put things in place.Some un­fin­ished busi­ness in­cludes leg­isla­tive amend­ments to al­low for stronger of­fi­cial in­ter­ven­tions, stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions to en­sure re­gion­al man­u­fac­tur­ers are ful­ly on board and en­sur­ing that non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) are aware of the pos­si­bil­i­ties un­der the new sys­tem.

"I think it's a good idea," said Hazel Brown. "But peo­ple must know about how it works and they must al­so trust it," the vet­er­an ad­vo­cate told the Busi­ness Guardian. Known as the Cari­com Rapid Alert Sys­tem for Ex­change of In­for­ma­tion on Dan­ger­ous (non-food) Con­sumer Goods (Car­rex), the in­ten­tion is to en­sure that Cari­com coun­tries are prompt­ly alert­ed to the ex­is­tence of flawed prod­ucts on the re­gion­al mar­ket. A net­work, me­di­at­ed by the Cari­com sec­re­tari­at, has been de­signed and caters to in­for­ma­tion flows through a sys­tem of na­tion­al con­tact points-in­vari­ably con­sumer af­fairs de­part­ments with­in gov­ern­ment-"eco­nom­ic op­er­a­tors," in­clud­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers and sell­ers, lo­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion bod­ies and con­sumers-both di­rect­ly and through their rep­re­sen­ta­tive NGOs. The pas­sage of har­monised leg­is­la­tion in mem­ber states and the con­ven­ing of stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions are lag­ging in some coun­tries, in­clud­ing T&T, but ex­ist­ing do­mes­tic mech­a­nisms al­ready cov­er most of the ground.

Natasha Mustapha-Scott, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA), said her or­gan­i­sa­tion wel­comed the ini­tia­tive and saw it as a mech­a­nism "which is aimed at pro­tect­ing our con­sumers from the en­try of dan­ger­ous goods in­to the re­gion." "Glob­al­i­sa­tion and trade lib­er­al­i­sa­tion bring both ben­e­fits and risks, and re­gion­al gov­ern­ments must en­sure that im­port­ed prod­ucts are safe and en­sure that those prod­ucts that do not meet in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards and which are iden­ti­fied as un­safe, are in­ter­cept­ed be­fore harm is done to con­sumers," she said. Mod­el con­sumer pro­tec­tion draft­ed by the Cari­com sec­re­tari­at and fine-tuned for do­mes­tic ap­pli­ca­tion is said to be bound for par­lia­ment here and re­gion­al train­ing has al­ready been con­duct­ed in in­spec­tion and en­force­ment. In­struc­tion for na­tion­al fo­cal points in us­ing the sys­tem has al­so been ex­e­cut­ed. There ex­ists a long­stand­ing Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion and Safe­ty Act in T&T, but ac­tivists be­lieve the need for re­view and re­form is long over­due.

The Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs al­ready ap­plies a well-de­vel­oped lo­cal com­plaints sys­tem. Re­gion­al of­fi­cials, how­ev­er, be­lieve Car­rex can lead to more ef­fi­cient re­dress over­seas es­pe­cial­ly, but not ex­clu­sive­ly, in the case of Cari­com man­u­fac­tur­ers. The sys­tem is mod­elled af­ter the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) rapid alert mech­a­nism, Rapex, which was set up to alert mem­ber states to risks as­so­ci­at­ed with prod­ucts mar­ket­ed and sold with­in Eu­rope. Bar­ba­dos' Min­is­ter of Com­merce and Trade, Hay­nes­ley Benn, has said Car­rex pro­vides Cari­com with the abil­i­ty "to har­monise and man­age the ac­tions with­in mem­ber states, with re­spect to mar­ket sur­veil­lance." Mustapha-Scott, how­ev­er, not­ed: "Giv­en that in­di­vid­ual gov­ern­ments have lim­it­ed pow­er to reg­u­late the move­ment of dan­ger­ous prod­ucts, the re­gion­al scope of this ini­tia­tive will al­low for greater mon­i­tor­ing and pre­ven­tion of ... (dan­ger­ous) goods en­ter­ing the Cari­com mar­ket." The on­line mech­a­nism to im­ple­ment Car­rex is al­ready in place and the Busi­ness Guardian has been able to re­view the sys­tem.

The bare-bones home­page at: www.car­rex.cari­com.org, makes nav­i­ga­tion easy, but does not ad­dress sev­er­al key points. For ex­am­ple, the Web site does not men­tion the fact that Car­rex is ap­plic­a­ble on­ly to com­plaints or alerts rel­a­tive to non-food prod­ucts. As is the case in the EU, the sys­tem does not ap­ply to food or phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and med­ical prod­ucts. The Web site al­so guar­an­tees con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, but there are manda­to­ry in­for­ma­tion fields that can have the im­pact of re­duc­ing the will­ing­ness of whis­tle-blow­ers with­in man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­trib­u­tive op­er­a­tions who might de­tect de­sign and en­gi­neer­ing flaws. Brown al­so be­lieves the project "can­not be ef­fect­ed with­out con­sid­er­able pub­lic aware­ness." She said it is al­so a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to trig­ger some se­ri­ous con­sumer or­gan­is­ing and ad­vo­ca­cy, es­pe­cial­ly us­ing the new net­work­ing tech­nol­o­gy.