Fouad Fleifel Lectures on Consumer Rights

Fouad Fleifel

On the occasion of World Consumer Rights Day on March 18, the AUB Business Student Society hosted a lecture in West Hall concerning the recent developments in the Lebanese consumer protection law given by Fouad Fleifel, the acting director general of the Lebanese Ministry of Economy and Trade.

Employing visual aids to enhance his lecture, Fleifel introduced the Ministry of Economy and Trade as one of the most affective ministries today, given its close contact with the average consumer citizen and its role in protecting consumer rights. He delineated six different tasks carried out by the ministry in terms of monitoring the market of goods and services purchased by consumers in Lebanon. He spoke about the importance of analyzing samples of food and beverages available on the market and also about monitoring the net versus package weight of merchandise sold.

Stressing the ministry's supervision of both the natural gas and petroleum services and the mineral and gold industry in Lebanon, Fleifel gave the example of a recently arrested fraudulent merchant who was selling his clients gold bracelets filled with steel on the inside.

Investigating customer complaints is another important task carried out by Fleifel's ministry. He said the ministry "strives to pre-empt the threat of food-related epidemics by removing contaminated aliments from the market, as well as broadcasting warnings to the consumer." To illustrate this point, Fleifel gave the example of a certain brand of children's milk suspected of carrying the salmonella parasite in 2005. The product could not be removed in a timely fashion from certain remote areas of the country and warnings about it were thus disseminated nationwide.

While he reported that the Lebanese consumer today mainly complains about the price inflation that the ongoing economic crisis has inflicted on the market, Fleifel said people also have several duties towards themselves and their economy. They should always ascertain the price of a product and its mode of employment and report defective items, first to the merchant and at a later stage to the Ministry of Economy. Such items, he added, may include fraudulent invoices or bills that comprise, in addition to the VAT, other taxes.

Fleifel, who spoke in Arabic throughout the entire lecture, concluded that in the future the ministry intends to make a closer scrutiny of the Lebanese market to further ensure consumer safety. "We also intend to promote a shadow youth government and to continue our cooperation with non-governmental organizations and the academic sector in order to curb the wave of fraudulence, corruption, and monopoly that has, in varying levels, plagued our market."