Sudaryatmo, the newly elected chairman of the Indonesian Consumer Protection Foundation (YLKI) for the 2010 - 2014 period shares his expectations with The Jakarta Post about ensuring consumers rights.
Question: What are your leadership priorities?
Answer: The consumer protection problems in Indonesia are an integral part of the problem of regulation. Existing regulations cannot fully protect consumers. I know this is a macro problem and the YLKI is too small an institution to be able to change that. However, if we just leave things as they are, such unfairness will remain.
In this context, the YLKI plays a role in ensuring that policies and regulations are pro-consumer. Consumer injustice occurs in Indonesia because its laws are unfair to consumers and if this does not change, injustice will always occur. In Indonesia, the public has little say in the formulation of policy, so they are not pro-consumer.
What are the main problems with ensuring consumers' rights in Indonesia?
We have to refer to the four main rights of consumers. They are safety and security, access to information and the right to be heard and to have options.
In Indonesia, consumers are still struggling for a right to safety and security. For example, cooking gas tank explosions, food poisoning and road accidents that victimize consumers. Complaints and redress mechanisms for consumers are still weak in Indonesia.
Last year, there were only 501 complaints lodged with the YLKI. The number is very low compared to Malaysia where consumers lodged around 5,000 complaints with its National Consumer Complaint Center last year.
The reluctance of the public to complain is made worse by the negative attitude of businessmen who criminalize critical consumers. In Indonesia, maybe only the banking sector has the awareness to look at complaint as feedback.
Why do these problems persist?
If we look at the complaints lodged with the YLKI, there are a variety of problems. One of the sectors with the most complaints is the property sector. Many disputes occur because of poor administration of land rights. For example, local authorities might issue a land use permit to a developer, only to revoke it without notice if the local government needs the land for a terminal or other purpose.
So, the main problem is?
The main problem is the many violations in the implementation of the 1999 Consumer Protection Law.
Is the YLKI influential enough to contribute to the resolution of the existing problems?
First, the issues handled by the YLKI are too vast. We handle almost all consumer issues. In other countries, consumer institutions focus themselves on specific sectors, such as research, complaint handling and education. There is no way that we can handle everything because we only have around 25 staff members.
In terms of the institutional influence, we have limitations. Many people expect the YLKI to be proactive in protecting consumers, but if being proactive means carrying out governmental functions such as raids, we cannot do that. Many people think the YLKI is a part of the government, but we are an independent body. These perceptions need to be addressed by making the relevant government institutions responsive for carrying out their function well. (map)
