Masari To SON: Prosecute Standards Violators
— Aug 17, 2016 4:54 am | Leave a comment
Governor of Katsina state, Aminu Bello Masari, yesterday charged the acting Director General and Chief Executive of Standards Organisation of Nigeria, Dr. Paul Angya, to prosecute standards violators in the country.
Speaking at the start of the sensitisation programme for MSMEs and launch standards / codes of practice for priority agricultural products organized by the SON in Katsina, Governor Masari, represented by his deputy, Mannir Yakubu, said sanctions for violators would deter those who deliberately deprive citizens the right to value for their money and endanger lives through substandard products.
“Producers must endeavour to adopt a culture of compliance with standards to support the efforts of government in fostering a viable economic environment. The state government will continue to give SON the necessary support it requires to enforce the application of standard for the betterment of our social, economic, industrial and most importantly, agricultural sector,” he declared.
Katsina, he said, is committed to ensuring the patronage of locally made goods by the contractors handling all its developmental projects but this could only be encouraged if producers foster a culture of compliance to standards.
“The presence of SON must be felt at all levels to aid the development of indigenous products to world class standards, to eliminate the distribution of substandard products in the country and alleviate poverty among our people,” Masari insisted.
He posited that the advantage foreign products have over those made in Nigeria is simply compliance with standards, adding that no industry can be sustained without the application of relevant standards.
The governor promised that Katsina’s collaboration with SON in its effort to strategise and promote made Nigeria goods, saying sensitization must align with advocacies for compliance to standards to form the backbone required to meet the needs of the consumers at home and abroad.
Earlier, the Acting Director General of SON, Dr. Angya, said the nationwide programme is aimed at MSMEs’ capacity building with a focus on developing the agricultural products in Katsina State to world class.
“With frequent rejections of Nigeria’s produce from the international markets and particularly the ban of beans from Nigeria by the European Union (EU), the same policy of adding value to other agricultural products throughout the agricultural value chain in Nigeria is becoming an important economic policy of the government,” he observed.
No comments:
Post a Comment