Commission urges shops not to charge extra during lockdown

ALTHOUGH there are no orders on price regulations set out in the Pandemic Act, the Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (ICCC) is urging shops not to charge extra during the current lockdown in Port Moresby.
ICCC commissioner and chief executive officer Paulus Ain said dialogue with Controller David Manning was continuing.
“With the Pandemic Act, it has not given us any opportunity to begin our operations so what we are actually doing now is working with the controllers’ office to have some new orders released for the ICCC to start the exercise to monitor price grouching and this is currently a work in progress,” he said.
Ain said the first exercise undertaken in the first lockdown had sent a message to business houses around the country.
“We have been working very well, under the previous arrangement price regulations,” he said.
“The first exercise that we took shook the business community and we have now gone into a phase where we are getting a lot of complaints coming from consumers and we are also getting applications from the business houses who wish to change or adjust their prices.
“So these are process that we are internally managing, the actual operation of stopping or eradicating the price grouching is something that we are working with the controller’s office to get new orders for the ICCC to commence this exercise in the second phase of the lockdown and the Covid-19 situation,” Ain said.