The Tribunal for Consumer Claims (TCC) was established to provide an easier and a speedier mechanism for consumers to seek redress against the traders outside the court. The President of the TCC is allowed in section 107 of the Consumer Protection Act 1999 (CPA) to assist parties in negotiating their settlement. However, the non-specification of the settlement method led to the wide discretion of the President in using whatever method they felt comfortable with, whereby sometimes this practice becomes too ambiguous. In acknowledging the possibility of a lack of consumers' awareness of the noble way to settle the dispute via alternative dispute resolution (ADR), this article investigates the usage of ADR at the pre-hearing stage. This study adopts the qualitative method where the Consumer Protection Act 1999 (Act 599), the Consumer Protection (the Tribunal for Consumer Claims) Regulations 1999 and related laws on some mediation practices in Malaysian Courts are critically analysed. A comparative study is made on the practice of the Singapore Small Claims Tribunal, where the Small Claims Tribunal Act 1984 and the Small Claims Tribunals (Amendment) Act 2018 are being analysed. The article proposed that the practice of mediation in the Singapore Small Claims Tribunal is practical for TCC to emulate since it shares the same ADR element of TCC of being simple, quicker and cheaper, apart from the fact that it is also in line with the practice of existing judicial institutions in Malaysia. It is hoped that the suggested framework will lead to a better implementation of ADR at the TCC and, consequently, improve the TCC's function as a better dispute resolution mechanism for consumers and, simultaneously, empower the consumers.
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In-Text Citation: (Safei & Abdullah, 2022)
To Cite this Article: Safei, S., & Abdullah, N. C. (2022). Mediation as a Pre-trial Process at the Tribunal for Consumer Claims, Malaysia: The Way Forward. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 12(10), 2917–2927.
Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s)
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