YEREVAN, OCTOBER 15, NOYAN TAPAN. October 15 is International Day of "Education for Stable Consumption". On this occasion Protection of Consumer Rights NGO applied to the RA Ministry of Education and Science with the proposal to include the Guide on Stable Consumption in the national educational curricula. The NGO chairman Abgar Yeghoyan announced at the October 15 press conference that there have already been responses from the ministry. In his words, while buying various goods and using services, Armenian consumers lack elements of knowledge about their rights as consumers, as a result of which they encounter serious social, economic and environmental problems. "One of our major goals is to educate a consumer who makes a choice to buy a commodity or use a service from ethical, social, economic and environmental considerations," he pointed out. A. Yeghoyan said that their NGO received 690 complaints from consumers in January-September 2008. The main complaints were related to food safety, foodstuffs, and public services, in particular, telecommunication, water supply and gas supply services. According to A. Yeghoyan, in recent period there was an increase in the number of complaints from mobile phone users in connection with extra sums added on their accounts. The complaints on food safety were mainly about the sale of old or unlabeled foodstuffs. As for the checks conducted by the Food Safety and Veterinary Inspection of the RA Ministry of Agriculture, in particular, the checks of weight and prices of bread products, A. Yeghoyan expressed an opinion that it would be more correct to control the weight of bread in bakeries rather than shops.

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