On the occasion of World Consumer Rights Day, the Lebanese German University in collaboration with the Ministry of Economy and Trade organized a conference on “Consumer Rights in Lebanon” on Wednesday 13 March, 2019.
Eng. Imad Youssef, Management and Marketing Expert at the Ministry, spoke about the laws issued in 2005 for the protection of consumers and intellectual property and how the Ministry inspectors are actively combating monopoly and fraud and monitoring consumer products all over the Lebanese territory. The Ministry is also raising awareness among citizens and organizations of the need to participate in detecting fraudulent acts and to report them to the relevant bodies. Hence consumers are responsible of looking into the product origin, expiry date, and whether it has been stored adequately, while producers are liable to abide by local laws concerning all information that should appear on product labels. Eng. Youssef also mentioned the various inter universities competitions and public campaigns that the Ministry has organized to raise awareness on food safety and consumer rights and the volunteer program it has launched to involve university students in its fight against fraud all over the Lebanese territory. It is worth noting that LGU took part in an interuniversity competition entitled “Innovation in Food Control – IFC2014″ organized by the Ministry of Economy and Trade in February 2014 and has been awarded first prize.
The purpose of the competition was to get the academic sector involved in the development of projects carried out by the Ministry in order to devise new tools that would enhance consumer protection and boost consumers’ confidence in the government.