A senior official with the China Consumers' Association said that the group is likely to get official permission to represent consumers in courts.

"The Consumer Protection Law will be amended this year, and we will be allowed to help consumers through legal representation," Yang Hongcan, secretary-general of the China Consumers' Association (CCA), was quoted by Monday's China Daily as saying.

Yang said for the past 25 years, the association's role has been limited to mediating in disputes between consumers and vendors before the matter entered the legal process. "Once the issue reaches the courts, we cannot do anything,"

The CCA is a government-funded, non-profit organization established in 1984 to protect consumers' rights. It has 3,138 branches across the country.

Citing last year's tainted-milk scandal, Yang said that if the association had the right to represent consumers in court, the victims would have been able to register their cases with the local CCA office and entrust it to represent them in court.

That would have saved them both time and money, and provided them with information about their legal rights, he said.

Qiu Baochang, dean of Beijing-based Huijia Law Firm, said: "In many cases such as the milk scandal, it is hard for the consumer, as an individual, to have his or her rights protected. It is necessary to empower consumer organizations to represent groups of consumers in court."

The CCA received nearly 648,000 complaints from 4.38 million consumers last year and helped them recover more than 66 million yuan (about 9.7 million U.S. dollars) through measures such as refunds and product recalls.

Source: Xinhua