Dear Visitor!

The Donetsk Regional Consumers Association (DRCA) was founded in 1989 as NGO aiming to unite and protect sitizens as consumers. There are 21 branches of DRCA in Donbass region. The main mission of the organization is to contribute to the formation of Ukraine as the legal State and to protect effectively the rights of sitizens as consumers at the national and local levels.

During 12 years of its existence the DRCA has united about 2000 activists who were trained by themselves and now they are disseminating knowledge about the effective methods of protection of their rights as consumers in the Donbass region (the population of the Donbass region is more then 7 millions people).

The DRCA is governed by the permanent Board which consists of: Chairman, Deputy Chairman, Executive Director, Treasurer, Secretary and 4 Members. The DRCA's objectives are:

• consultation of sitizens on consumers rights problems, mass-media included;
• consumers assistance in sueing to the Court;
• assistance in defending consumers interests in the Court;
• out-of-Court conflict resolution (mediation);
• elaboration of proposals for State organizations;
• working out of the methodical materials on protection of sitizens rights as consumers;
• publication in mass-media.

The DRCA cooperates actively with newspapers and TV. In the framework of the educational program our organization conducts seminars for consumers, issues special bulletins "Consumer is always right" on different subjects and so on.

For the last 4 years about 10 000 citizens addressed DRCA and most of them got an adequate assistance here.

DRCA was the first in Ukraine to introduce out-of-court consumers conflict resolution (mediation). There are certified mediators in our organization and many consumers conflicts are successfully solved in Donetsk.

DRCA as public organization has no paid staff but 60 persons work as volunteers in Donetsk and in 21 branches of DRCA. Lawyers, journalists, psychologists and other specialists collaborate with DRCA.

The main financial source is membership fees and sponsors' support. In 1998-2001 the DRCA had successfully realized 4 projects with the support of USAID and Counterpart Alliance for Partnership Program. It concerned citizens as consumers rights protection and their education as civilized consumers. At present time we are carrying out the project supported by the Democrassy Fund of the U.S. Embassy, Kiev, which is aimed at the consumers rights protection at market places of the Donetsk Region

The DRCA is looking for partners to carry out joint International projects.

Alexander Udovichenko, Chairman of DRCA
Garry Mangasarov, Executive director

Our address is: 289, Cheluskintsev Street, Donetsk 340121 Ukraine
Tel.: +380 662 580 012 Tel\Fax: +380 622 577 498
E-mail: drca@skif.net

PRESENT SITUATION IN CONSUMERS POSITION IN UKRAINE

United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted "Guiding Principles of Consumers Rights Protection" (Resolution #39\248) in 1985. The main idea of this document is recognition by a State the priority of consumers interests over the interests of producers. There are a lot of reasons for such problem which is very topical in Ukraine: consumers mainly have no professional knowledge when they buy a commodity: they have no technical, economical or legal possibilities to verify the truth of advertising slogans; they do not know how to fix correctly the facts of violations of Law and do other trial acts; they have no time, no means and power to protect their own interests. Mostly it concerns pensioners who are mainly poor persons of the former generation who are not adapted to the new market relations and who can not find their feet in that area. Besides they mostly get into the critical consumers situations and they have no possibility to address to a professional lawyer because lack of money.

The problems of consumers rights protection are consistently solved in Ukraine at the State level. But the DRCA's 12 years experience shows that the State's efforts do not reach the aim as legal ignorance of citizens bringing damage to themselves reduces the possibility of State to give the qualified assistance to the citizens. The State's methods require the response of citizens in the form of the competent actions on the market of goods and services of Ukraine. Only during the last time over 2 500 deceived people addressed to the DRCA for the help. The majority of them (65%) are pensioners. In 400 cases at the request of consumers claims were brought. About 1\3 of them were satisfied by defendants at first claim. In 250 cases the suit was brought to the Court. Up to this day 110 claims were finished as absolute or partial victory. In 40 cases (10%) people refused to struggle for their rights showing distrust to the legal system of Ukraine. Because of the extreme overwork of the Courts 80 claims are still at the first instance Courts of Donetsk region.

The main problem of such situation is the legal illiteracy of sitizens who often do not find their feet in this field, they do not know their rights as consumers and this causes conflicts too.

Thus there arises the actual long-term problem of education of citizens as civilized consumers who could find their feet in new for Ukraine market relations, prevent violation of their rights and in case when the legal violence could not be avoided to use effectively the methods to protect their rights.