What decisions were taken by the Consumer and Competition Division during these last two years that favourably affected consumers and as a result of which prices were reduced? If there were any, few consumers know about them.

Recently, both Minister Tonio Fenech and Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi repeatedly stated that many measures will be taken to strengthen the entity that is responsible for the protection of consumers and perhaps an agency will be created.

As the Central Bank governor recently said, the CCD should assume responsibility for these spiralling prices and it’s about time that action is taken. With the doing away of price orders, it’s only through an efficient Office for Fair Competition that one can somehow address the abuses.

Cartels are one of the most serious causes of price abuses. How many cartels has the CCD investigated in the last two years? The CCD regularly monitors prices and its inspectors are sent in various outlets to collect prices. The collected prices are being analysed?

Another cause of price increases could be abuses from dominant positions. Has the CCD carried out an economic analysis to establish the dominant players in the various product markets? If not, how could it curb abuses of dominant positions? If yes, what investigations were carried out in respect of dominant companies?

Did the CCD investigate any companies in a monopoly situation where dominance is even more blatant and where price abuses are more prone to take place. What is the CCD doing to protect small firms against the big ones? Is the CCD not aware of big companies ordering retailers to remove parallel imported products which could be selling at a lower price than those imported by these big firms thus depriving the consumer from lower prices?

This situation should be addressed immediately and now that government accepted Labour’s proposal to introduce a new Consumer Affairs agency to monitor prices, a frame work, with deadlines, should be included in the next budget.

Back to school

At times when our country is facing tough challenges in meeting the Lisbon agenda strategy, the education sector inflation is nine times higher than the euro zone average. Once again parents had to pay hefty prices to prepare their children for another scholastic year. Again no one knows what results came out of the investigation with regards to the uniform prices, while the investigation related to fees charged for school transport was not even concluded.

This government has learnt nothing: It puts heavy burdens on families’ shoulders and yet it would not even lift one little finger to help them.

Silvio Parnis is Labour Party spokesman on consumer affairs