The Competition and Consumer Affairs Commission (CCAC) on Tuesday launched an extensive and comprehensive Homebuilder’s Road Map, which was designed to allow ease of building homes, through guidelines to prevent substandard works and enable value for money.
CCAC Director Feyona Austin-Paul
This initiative was birthed after complaints raised issues of land buying scams, and inferior works by contractors among other challenges. After consultations with various entities and research, the roadmap, which can be found online, was created.
It presents information and the steps involved from purchasing land, hiring an architect, approval of works, recruiting a contractor, financing and the actual construction works.
CCAC Director Feyona Austin-Paul explained that this would ensure that wise decisions were made when building a home.
“The classes of complaints brought to the CCAC concerning domestic construction have revealed the abuse of consumers through shoddy works done by contractors in the industry, so much … as it threatens the safety of consumers. The Commission, therefore, recognises that we needed to take an approach by empowering consumers to make wise decisions before and even during the building process,” she noted.
She underscored that the lack of information made persons vulnerable when building their home. This will change with the data that has been provided and potential homebuilders are encouraged to utilise these tools.
“We want to empower consumers. We want to bring knowledge in the hands of consumers. We want them to be proactive themselves. So, when they enter into this negotiating game, they have the knowledge. It was indeed a rewarding journey for the CCAC in creating this initiative…It is the Competition and Consumer Affairs Commission’s aim to ensure that consumers always receive adequate protection across all sectors ad we know that this initiative is one step closer to ensure that consumers always have value for money,” she added.
In going one step further, persons are asked to bind their contractors via a contract, stipulating what materials should be used along with other requirements. As such, if a complaint is made for subpar works, this can be used as reference.
Guyana’s Consumer Affairs Act came into effect on September 27, 2011, to provide protection to consumers. It also outlines the legal requirements that apply to all transactions between a consumer and seller; and stipulates the penalties to be instituted against contractors for inferior works.
If a contractor is found liable to compensate consumers and fails to do so, the Commission can move to prosecute them through the courts. However, some 70 per cent of the 25 complaints per year have been solved at the investigative level. The others are pending. (G12)
