Consumer Rights Protection: Degree of Awareness and its Present Status in Bangladesh

Abstract

Consumer rights are considered as the basic human right and violation of consumer rights is considered as the violation of the human rights. The ignorance of the consumers regarding their rights is a contributing factor to poor consumer rights protection in our country. This study aims at measuring the awareness and status of Bangladesh on consumer rights protection. Primary data has been collected from 450 representative samples besides analyzing available secondary data. It has been revealed through our study that 53.3 percent of the population is totally ignorant about their rights as consumer and the remaining 46.7 percent are knowledgeable about rights to a limited extent. 52 percent of the consumers of our country think that they are constantly being deceived by the egoistic businessmen. These consumers can’t do anything other than remaining silent. Our study has suggested a set of action plan classified into four categories i.e.: awareness building program, infrastructure development, legislative based action plan and law enforcing team development, to ensure the protection of consumer rights in Bangladesh.

Keywords: Consumer Bill of Rights, Consumer Activist Group, Consumer Awareness, Anti-consumer Rights Practices