When we buy windows, doors, tiles, glue or other building materials for our home, we count on quality. But no matter how diligently we study the market, the features and characteristics of the products, we are not protected from counterfeiting and forgery
It’s one thing when it simply concerns our money and the aesthetic side, and another when low-quality material directly poses a danger to health and life.
It is impossible to fully control the quality of products on the market, because there are no levers for this. That is, under the guise of cement of a well-known brand, they can easily sell you a low-quality fake, but no one will be held accountable for it.
I will tell you how this happened, and whether the problem can be solved (spoiler: yes) – further. Any market sphere is impossible without a regulatory body that will monitor the quality of the product.
Without it, we fall into a vicious circle of a deceived buyer, when he can turn to the seller, manufacturer and carrier of the goods in turn with a claim for a poor-quality purchase, but will not find the truth. For example, you bought fish and at home you found out that it was spoiled.
You returned to the store to get your money back, but you were sent to the manufacturer (they said we comply with all storage requirements). The manufacturer, in turn, assured you of the high quality of his product (provided the necessary documents and certificates), and therefore handed it over to the carrier of the goods.
The latter also has certain guarantees that it complies with the rules of transportation, and therefore told you to return to the store. As a result, everyone turned out to be “honest” market participants, although no one reimbursed you for the money you spent on spoiled fish.
This sketch roughly characterizes the situation that is happening in the construction market. After all, there is no adequate market supervision there, so there can be no talk of consumer protection at all.
A fiction called “market surveillance”
But why is there no such monitoring? This story has been going on for several years. In 2001, Ukraine adopted a law on market surveillance.
And it was quite good: if by Soviet standards, production (roughly speaking, an enterprise) was previously controlled, the new law provided for supervision of products. But in 2008, the situation changed: the president received the right to decide which body would carry out control over products and gave these powers to our “favorite” DABI (which in itself sounds quite absurd, considering that it is one of the most corrupt bodies in Ukraine).
Due to a legal conflict, over time DABI lost the ability to carry out control (although it was already quite conditional), and for the second year in a row there has been no monitoring of the quality of construction products in Ukraine. Moreover, since 2019, we have also canceled mandatory certification of construction products!
So if the next time you buy a heater in a well-publicized chain of building materials stores, you notice that its quality is suspiciously poor (for a declared German one!), don’t be surprised: no one here has simply checked it and adjusted it to certain quality standards.
And this, by the way, is a great opportunity to slip you, for example, a Chinese fake, but for “all the money.”
A fair market wants adequate rules of the game
The problem I described is not new. The honest market has long noticed it and asked the authorities to react. And the latter proposed to give the State Consumer Service the levers of control. And it would be good if it had enough necessary specialists. So what to do?
Be that as it may, the issue really should be resolved as soon as possible, since every day of reflection produces more and more repairs and constructions using unnecessary materials, which poses a direct threat to our health and life.
Despite the fact that I have a difficult relationship with DABI (as a person who has been working in the construction industry for many years and knows firsthand how corrupt and dishonest this body is), I believe that it can be reformed. And it is not about reorganization, renaming or rearranging the terms.
And about the actual implementation of the Unified Electronic System in Construction that I created (which, by the way, has already proven its effectiveness through the e-cabinet, which in a few months of work has “caught” more than one fraudulent developer red-handed), which should eventually replace DABI.
At the same time, no one has canceled the control function. This is really important. Therefore, for now, it can indeed be transferred to DABI, but with one important condition: they will work under the supervision of the Ministry of Regional Development. Meanwhile, the issue of product quality in the construction market is directly about the introduction of the 305th EU regulation into our legal space (which, by the way, is one of the conditions of our Association Agreement).
The document contains norms and rules that all of Europe lives by, and which provide for a “high bar” for the quality of products sold to people. I will emphasize right away: no, improving quality is not about a high increase in price (paradoxically, but sometimes categorically the opposite).
After all, nowadays you pay a lot of money for something that is unreasonably expensive. After all, you often buy a fake or counterfeit. And finally, about responsibility. Remember the story about the spoiled fish? With the introduction of adequate market supervision, as well as the 305th regulation, you will not be led by the nose in the construction market.
It is banal, if only because each participant will be assigned specific obligations and rights. Therefore, we continue the struggle. I draw the attention of the authorities to the need for adequate reform of the State Agency for the Construction of Buildings and Infrastructure as soon as possible. And I also call on the parliament to adopt my bill on the introduction of the 305th regulation in the second reading.
Our decisions today are the safety of Ukrainians in their homes, jobs, and infrastructure facilities tomorrow.
Olena Shulyak, People’s Deputy of Ukraine
