Anti-Scam Taskforce plans to set up Scamwatch Centre to give people early warning on scams

The National Anti-Scam Taskforce is currently working to establish a Scamwatch Centre so that people can get an early warning on scams that could start in the country.

Fijian Competition and Consumer Commission CEO Joel Abraham says FCCC has founded a network called the Pacific Island Network of Competition Consumer and Economic Regulators or PINCCER to get all regulators around the Pacific together and find some of these issues at a regional level as opposed to at country level.

He says scams are definitely on their radar and they have discussed this extensively with the New Zealand Commerce Commission as well and found many scams that come into New Zealand eventually make their way to countries like Samoa and Tonga because of the strong diaspora that exists there.

Abraham says the idea is to work with individual regulators so as soon as a country like Australia or New Zealand registers a scheme, Fiji gets an alert and they start preparing.

The CEO says they are hoping to get adequate budgetary support from government and have made a submission so that they can be able to then implement this.

Abraham says they have short, medium and long term measures on how they can counteract scams.

He says they are also aware that people will continue to do this and their job is to ensure that they get on to the forefront of this and are able to stop it before it becomes a widespread issue.