Expansion of Social Partnership necessary
With a new Administration at the helm, there is a call being made for consumers’ interest to have a seat at the level of the Social Partnership.
The call is coming from Consumer Advocate and Director General of the Barbados Consumers Research Organisation Inc. (BarCRO), Reverend Malcolm Gibbs-Taitt. Contending that this is not the first time he has put forward the idea of consumers being part of the now tripartite grouping of Government, the private sector and the trade unions, he maintained that consumers are too large and important a collective group not to be recognised at that level.
“There is no mention of the consumer, who in the whole scheme of things are the most important aspect in the quadruple, or what they would call the triangle, because they don’t even bring the fourth person into it. But we should be the first people in any Social Partnership because consumerism is a socio-economic dimension, yet we seem to ignore that fact, and consumers themselves don’t seem to be bothered either,” he said in an interview with The Barbados Advocate.
He made the remarks while noting that over the years only one Prime Minister, the late David Thompson, has so far invited BarCRO to attend a meeting of the Social Partnership, and he is hoping that the new Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley will do the same. The consumer advocate’s comments came as he noted that all three social partners could right now argue that as consumers themselves they represent the interest of consumers in general, but Gibbs-Taitt was fast to dismiss the notion, contending that in meetings, each of the three are there to put forward a case for their specific group and there will be many instances where the needs, wants and demands of consumers will not factor into their positions. With that in mind, he argued that there cannot be a true Social Partnership unless the consumer is part of it.
“I don’t care who else is, but you cannot have a Social Partnership without a consumer body. It is impossible. It defies logic to do so… How can you reach the point of discussing somebody’s income if that person is unable to buy food? If the incomes strategy is wrong, then the pricing strategy cannot be right,” he added.
With that in mind, Gibbs-Taitt also contended that there is need in Barbados for a prices commission or prices ombudsman to help bring down the costs of goods in this country.
“Call it what you like, but we need an entity in this country that is charged with ensuring that there is true transparency as it relates to the cost of goods imported into Barbados. A proper prices commission would be able to obtain the pricing structure from wherever in the world we buy goods from and make sure that merchants are not then putting exorbitant mark-ups on the goods they sell,” he explained.
Referring to the ongoing trade war between China and the United States, Gibbs-Taitt is adamant that this is all the more reason Barbados should have a prices commission. He is purporting that as a result of this trade war, persons are likely to charge more for goods they buy.
“Whether the charging structure is legal or illegal, the price will be higher because they know they have consumers who would tell anybody who is willing to listen ‘well we can’t eat the money’ and they will buy the products. What I know is, if a proper prices commission was enforced, it would be able to obtain a proper database for all the products that people buy, anywhere at all in the place, and therefore if a false invoice is pushed before a customs officer they can dispute it and say to them that in spite of the high prices they have presented, they would have to refer to the prices they have on record. They would have then to pay accordingly and charge accordingly,” the BarCRO head stated.
(JRT)