China's Auto Maintenance and Repair Trade Association, with 61 local associations and 468 companies, called on all companies of this trade Monday to provide "knight service" to their consumers.

As the International Day for Protecting Consumers' Rights approaches, China's auto maintenance and repair trade decided to make March the "month for good quality of auto maintenance and repair." It is the fourth year that such an activity has been carried out nationwide.

The 468 companies are the best in the country, selected by the association on the basis of performance in 2005.

China has more than 345,000 auto maintenance and repair businesses. They include about 10,000 first-class enterprises, some 50,000 second-class enterprises, and other third-class enterprises, together employing about 2.5 million people.

The sector, together with auto maintenance and repair equipment manufacturing, are cited as a "rising sun" industry as more and more people buy their own vehicles.

This industry, nevertheless, also gets lots of complaints from consumers, who say service quality is poor with too high costs.

Kang Wenzhong, president of the China's Auto Maintenance and Repair Trade Association, said that industry lapses are due in part to a large amount of employees not being well educated.

He said by holding such activities for three years, maintenance and repair companies and consumers will have more understanding and he hoped the companies can run an honest business and build up a good reputation.

Source: Xinhua