The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission says it is overwhelmed by the responses received from consumers over it’s intervention in cases of unfair trading by various companies and business institutions.

In an interview with News Diggers! Sunday, CCPC Consumer Protection director Brian Lingela said the total number of resolved consumer and trader cases per year has increased from 48 in 2008 to 1,800 in 2017.

He added that the Commission would this year focus on sensitising traders and consumers.

“From consumers we have continued receiving an overwhelming response. I will give you an example, just last year, we investigated and closed over 1,800 complaints from consumers across the country. And we received over 1,300 phone calls on our toll-free number, of people complaining from all parts of the country. So it shows that our efforts are bearing fruit in terms of sensitisation,” Lingela said.

“But we do recognize that there is still more need for sensitization; and because of that we have lined up quite a number of sensitisation activities including provincial tours with selected provinces, to just sensitise our consumers about their rights and obligations.”

He said the move was not focused on consumers alone.

“This is not just for consumers but traders as well because those are the perpetrators of unfair trading practices. If I can give you an example, I have statistics from 2008, I cannot give you statistics prior to that. But from 2008 we were dealing with about 40 to 48 complex cases per year countrywide, but you can see that there has been exponential growth and now it’s almost 2,000 cases per year,” Lingela said.

He said Zambian consumers were increasingly becoming aware of their rights with regards to trading.