As mentioned earlier, the 1st reading of the amendments to the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act a.k.a. CPFTA proceeded on 21st July 2008. sgwatchDOG notes that the PDF is up on the Parliament "Bills Introduced" portion of its website.
sgwatchDOG hasn't finished sieving through the entire Bill, but notes that further (major) changes have been made compared to the draft shown during public consultation. One of the examples below.
Expansion of jurisdiction of Small Claims Tribunals (SCT)
sgwatchDOG presumes that the powers that be have discovered that part of the problem faced by consumers, was not the CPFTA, but the SCT Act. Rightly so.
For example, timeshare contracts finally come under SCT's jurisdiction. Previously, they were explicitly excluded.
Also, SCT previously regarded all disputes the same way, with no distinction between business-to-business disputes, and consumer-to-business disputes. This has now been changed in the bill tabled. In a way, this will mean that SCT has to take the "vulnerability" of a typical consumer into consideration, and protect them more. Malaysia has done it by having 2 separate tribunals, a SCT, and a Consumer Claims Tribunals.
Another amendment also enables disputes with money-changers to come under SCT jurisdiction.
p.s. the easy way to analyse an amendment bill is to look at the last few pages, i.e. the so-called "Explanatory Statement" to help guide the reader.
sgwatchDOG hasn't finished sieving through the entire Bill, but notes that further (major) changes have been made compared to the draft shown during public consultation. One of the examples below.
Expansion of jurisdiction of Small Claims Tribunals (SCT)
sgwatchDOG presumes that the powers that be have discovered that part of the problem faced by consumers, was not the CPFTA, but the SCT Act. Rightly so.
For example, timeshare contracts finally come under SCT's jurisdiction. Previously, they were explicitly excluded.
Also, SCT previously regarded all disputes the same way, with no distinction between business-to-business disputes, and consumer-to-business disputes. This has now been changed in the bill tabled. In a way, this will mean that SCT has to take the "vulnerability" of a typical consumer into consideration, and protect them more. Malaysia has done it by having 2 separate tribunals, a SCT, and a Consumer Claims Tribunals.
Another amendment also enables disputes with money-changers to come under SCT jurisdiction.
p.s. the easy way to analyse an amendment bill is to look at the last few pages, i.e. the so-called "Explanatory Statement" to help guide the reader.
No comments:
Post a Comment