Kolkata, April 27 -- The Consumer Affairs (CA) department is reaching out to the higher educational institutions across Bengal through seminars to raise awareness about consumer rights and protect consumers from fraud.
The CA department's principal secretary, Neelam Meena had proposed holding awareness campaigns in higher educational institutions instead of limiting it just to schools, owing to age factor. Under instructions of the department's minister-in-charge, Biplab Mitra, budgetary allocation was increased for focused campaigns.
"We are going for topic-based awareness about burning issues by roping in experts and supplementing the programme by highlighting consumer rights associated with that topic. Two such seminars were held at two premier institutes in Kolkata," said Moumita Das, assistant director, Kolkata Port (Regional Office), CA department who led the initiative. The first symposium on Food Safety and Consumer Protection (CP) Act 2019 was held at a hotel management institute at Taratala in which Kalyan Kumar Bhattacharya, ex-Biochemist & HOD, Anthropological Survey of India was present. The second one on CP Act, cyber security and Bureau of Indian Standards was held at Jnan Chandra Ghosh Polytechnic College at Mominpore. It was attended by officials of BIS, from Cyber Crime cell, Lalbazar, among others.
"We will be soon holding awareness in coordination with the Real Estate Regulatory Authority in the backdrop of numerous cases of consumers getting fleeced by real estate developers in connection with delivery of flats. A seminar on legal metrology is also on the cards," said an official.
The department has also initiated talks with banks so that experts can join hands and speak on topics such as bank fraud, digital transactions related cheating etc.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.