State Secretary in the Ministry of Trade, Tourism, and Telecommunications Vesna Kovač, on the occasion of the World Consumer Day, organised in the shopping centre “Delta City”, has underlined that the awareness of the Serbian citizens about the consumers’ rights is much more developed than five years ago, and that the achieved level of protection of consumers in practice is close to the European standards.
“Consumers know whom to address for help in resolving their problems, and on the other hand, the willingness of shop keepers is more and more visible when it comes to resolving the complaints of consumers because by doing so they achier better loyalty”, says Ms Kovač. She adds that in 2017 there were around 17.000 complains of the consumers, and the largest number refers to footwear (21%) and mobile phones (12%).
Stressing the significance of the non-government sector Ms Kovač has said: “We are intending to provide support to the increase of staff, material and technical capacities of the associations for consumer protection”, adding that this year 20.000.000.00 dinars have been allocated for the support to the work of the associations, which is by one third more than last year.
During this event, organised by the Ministry with the support of the experts from the 2013 IPA Twinning Project “Further development of consumer protection in Serbia”, the consumers were informed about their fundamental consumer rights and mechanism for their realisation.
The fair was attended by 30 representatives of the Ministry (Sector for consumer protection, Sector for trade inspection, Sector for touristic inspection) which responded to the questions ensuring that all the interested consumers and traders clarify their dilemmas, and to raise the level of the knowledge and information necessary for making economically rational decisions when buying. The citizens also talked with the representatives of the associations for consumer protection who are mostly addressed by the consumers when they fail to resolve their issues in direct contact with the traders. On this occasion the citizens were provided with the information brochures “Learn about your rights” in which it was simply and easily explained the most important consumer rights and the deadlines within which they can realise them.
Within the activities organised for celebrating the World Consumer Day in the Republic of Serbia, the next day in Belgrade, in hotel “Holyday INN”, there was a professional forum organised about the quality of the footwear on domestic market with the topic “Design and/or quality”. This event, organised by the association of consumer protection “Consumer Organisation of Kragujevac”, was also participated by the representatives of the Ministry, 2013 IPA Twinning Project “Further development of consumer protection in Serbia”, Accreditation Body of Serbia, accredited laboratories, representatives of the economy, and other interested entities.
The basic goal of this forum was to identify and analyse the samples of the most frequent complaints about the footwear, which is referred to in the largest number of complaints, so that the interested entities could be able to undertaken all the necessary steps in the upcoming period in order to improve the current situation in that field.
