MARIBYRNONG City Council has vowed to stamp out unscrupulous door-to-door salespeople after a report found migrants were signing contracts they didn’t understand.

The council voted last week to send out Do Not Knock stickers to every household in the municipality in the next residents’ information pack due out in October.

The council will also write to all energy retailers and pay TV company Foxtel to request they abandon their aggressive door-to-door tactics.

Councillors wholeheartedly supported the motion at last week’s council meeting, with councillor Sel Sanli slamming door-to-door salespeople for treating residents like “idiots” with “an aggressive retail strategy that we’re not supportive of”.

Cr John Cumming said it was wrong for residents – regardless of whether they could speak English or not – to be bombarded by sales pitches in their own homes.

“If I want to change my supplier, I’ll change my supplier. If I want to get Foxtel, I’ll get it. I shouldn’t be bothered at home. People’s homes are a place of refuge from society. You have a right to choose who comes in your home, you shouldn’t have that right denied,” Cr Cumming said. “It’s wrong that our privacy is interrupted in this way.”

The move comes after Footscray Community Legal Centre (FCLC) released a report that found many door-to-door salespeople – including energy companies AGL, Origin, TRU Energy, Victoria Electricity and Red Energy – were getting African migrants and residents from other non-English speaking backgrounds to sign contracts they didn’t understand.

It also found that Footscray’s financial counsellors had difficulty acting on behalf of their clients because the utility companies did not answer phone messages, asked for information that was not needed to resolve the problem and took several weeks to reply to queries.

A second report by the FCLC detailed common issues faced by newly arrived residents and refugees.

The council has agreed to help the FCLC and the Department of Human Services work with new arrivals and refugee communities, particularly around Braybrook, Maidstone and Gordon St in Footscray.

“Obviously we’re delighted,” FCLC general manager Denis Nelthorpe said. “These doorknockers do not provide a useful public service, and at worst, prey upon people who don’t know how to protect their interests.”