EMN
Dimapur, August 2
CONSUMER rights organization Nagaland Voluntary Consumers’ Organization will be placing a representation focusing on extortion, illegal taxation and price rise in Nagaland before all the district deputy commissioners of districts. The activity is part of a consumers’ rights activity being undertaken by the NVCO, it was informed today. A representation against “illegal taxation” and price-rise “in goods and service charges” in Nagaland would be submitted to all the deputy commissioners in the state and “also to have interaction with civil societies,” a note from the NVCO received here today stated.
As part of its continuing drive to educate citizens about their rights as consumers, a rights awareness program was held recently in Pfutsero Government College and CBCC’s Mission Compound in Pfutsero on August 2.
On July 20 this year ten different groups of consumer rights activists were launched by the local organization NVCO, led by its president Kezhokhoto Savi in the state’s capital, Kohima. The objective behind launching the consumer rights groups was “to conduct awareness program on various topic of (consumers) rights in the various district headquarters and sub-division which is to benefit the college students and civil societies of the district.”
On August 2, a team of (consumers’) rights group members conducted an awareness program on various topics such as consumer rights, legal services authority – free legal aid to the poor and Lok Adalat. The event also focused on misleading advertisement and state consumer help lines, right to food; topics of medical negligence as well as extortion in the state etc. The team presented the topics and later followed it up with an open interactive session.
The morning session of the workshop was conducted in Pfutsero Government College where more than hundred students from the undergraduate sections along with the college’s vice-principal and lecturers participated. In the afternoon, an informal interaction was held in the CBCC’s mission compound. The staff members of CBCC and the teaching faculty of Baptist Theological College participated in the deliberations.
“It is learnt from the citizen of Pfutsero questioning why KMC is collecting parking fees everywhere in the town of state capital without providing any facilities and security and this conduct is unbecoming thinking only the new drivers are being harassed because the collector just issue slip before we actually parked and they collect in all no parking places creating more inconvenient to traffic police commenting that this kind of practice should come to Pfutsero,” the NVCO said in its press release.
On the much-abhorred activity of extortion or “illegal taxation” being indulged in by underground groups and some public organizations alike in Nagaland, a citizen complained that the colony office-bearers in Pfutsero charged Rs.50 for “killing our own pig as tax (per pig).” The college students also queried on “legal tax” and “illegal” and the reasons why “illegal taxation” continues rampantly practice in Nagaland.
The staff of CBCC and teaching faculty of Pfutsero Theological College prayed for the team as they go to various district in the state spreading awareness about the rights of people.
The consumers rights team also met the additional deputy commissioner of Pfutsero and EAC’s as well as the Pfutsero Town Council Action Committee’s convenor. They had a short meeting during which they deliberated on issues concerning consumers’ rights. Issues such as price-rise, toll tax collection were discussed. A representation against “illegal taxation” and price-rise in goods and service charges in Nagaland was submitted to the deputy commissioner of Phek through the additional deputy commissioner of Pfutsero.
