Why SON partner CICAN-SON DG

By allcitynews.ng

The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) capacity building for members of Commerce and Industry Correspondents Association of Nigeria (CICAN), might have come and gone, but the lessons derived therein would take very long time to fade away from memory of participants.

When the Director General and Chief Executive Officer of the organisation, Mallam Farouk Salim, gave approval for the workshop, which was meant to familiarize himself with CICAN members, it was a sign of his belief in the saying of a renowned economists, Ben Stein, that “personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows.”

And apparently aware that courteous treatment with journalists will always make them walking advertisements for SON, Salim told the gathering that “we cannot thank you enough, but rather request an even more robust collaboration as partners in progress and patriots.”

The DG why commending President Muhammadu Buhari for the opportunity given him to further contribute to nation building through the appointment as SON DG, he vowed to consolidate on the recorded achievements made by his predecessors to improve on fruitful service delivery as well as build relationships with stakeholders, including the media.

He explained that the reason for the capacity building was part of efforts to enable the media take a critical look at the structure, processes, practices and service offerings as well as public perception.

“This was in order to help us develop a template to address operational, service delivery and staff welfare challenges. To entrench equity and fairness as well as provide greater opportunities for staff to better contribute to the attainment of organisational goals. We have since been implementing many of the recommendations of that committee. We are committed to improving on our communication with stakeholders at all levels to get greater buy-in into our programmes and activities that are targeted at customer satisfaction, consumer protection and welfare as well as the positive growth of the nation’s economy.”

As part of his move to build on the people, knowing that the people would be better structure, the SON helmsman stated that his regime is providing a “more conducive atmosphere for the staff to deliver on the mandate of SON and collaborate more with our different stakeholders to improve on the delivery of the dividends of democracy to the Nigerian people.”

As a way to knock off assumption which can act as termites of relationships with stakeholders, he disclosed that “already, we are working with the National Assembly to strengthen our quality infrastructure such as equipping regional laboratories to bring our services nearer to the stakeholders and make greater contributions to the diversification of the nation’s economy.

The capacity of the National Metrology Institute is already being enhanced with acquisition of new equipment for calibration activities in diverse areas of measurement like flow, volume, we are embarking on aggressive marketing of our key service offerings such as: product certification, local and international, internationally accredited laboratory services internationally recognised management systems training services internationally accredited management systems certification services among others luckily, SON already has a crop of highly competent staff in various fields of standardisation, so my job is to mobilise and encourage them to improve substantially on their outputs.”