I refer to the malaysiakini report Kayveas: Ctos holding public to ransom .

The issue of Credit Tip Off Services Sdn Bhd (Ctos) has been actively debated in the local media for the past few days. For the record, this issue has been brought up on a number of occasions and it has also been debated in Parliament but it never gathered momentum until Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Department M Kayeas took interest in it.

For this the National Consumers Complaints Centre would like to congratulate the said deputy minister. Ctos has always claimed that they are merely providing a 'tip off' service to financial institutions. These financial institutions heavily rely upon Ctos even before considering financial services to a consumer.

Ctos has even sapped the role played by CCRIS which is maintained by Bank Negara. The mere appearance of a consumer's name on the so-called Ctos list would warrant an immediate rejection of any credit application.

This has put consumers in a difficult position as they are not able to obtain any loan facility. The question which arises here is how perfect is the list maintained by Ctos? It must be understood that Ctos is a private company and the prime motive of a company is to make a profit at the expense of consumer interest.

The NCCC has even received calls from consumers which claimed that names can even be removed with an 'under-table fee'. Information in the Ctos system is merely collected from public sources without any verification and when records are disputed, the burden is shifted to the consumer to prove otherwise.

The NCCC would agree that credit reporting agencies play an important role in assisting financial institutions is assessing the credit risk of a person but the operation of such agencies should be heavily regulated as they store the private data of individuals.

The risk of information being abused is always high. In the UK, there is the Consumer Credit Act, while the US has the a Fair Credit Reporting Act. New Zealand operates its Credit Reporting Code and Australia has its Privacy Act. All these Acts regulate the business of credit reporting.

In Malaysia, we are struggling with our Data Protection Act which is still at the draft stage. Therefore the operation of all credit reporting agencies in Malaysia should be suspended until some form of regulations are put in place.

The writer is director, National Consumer Complaints Centre (NCCC).