Every year the Day of 14th October is celebrated as the World Standards Day by the National Standards Bodies with a view to increase awareness among the stakeholders ie manufacturers, distributors, stockiest and consumers of good and services across the globe.
The objective of World Standards Day is to remind us about the increasing importance of global standardisation in the world economy and to promote the role of standards in helping meet the needs of business, industry, government, and consumers world-wide. The theme of the World Standards Day for the year 2007 is "Standards and the Citizen: Contributing to Society".
The theme recognises the vital significant share of standards and the citizen, in contributing to the Society in our everyday lives, remove misunderstanding thereof world-wide in existence about WTO regime, promoting free movement of products (goods and services) and requiring the safety and quality of products to be proved through transparent and reliable conformity assessment system, thereby bringing down technical barriers to trade.
The countries therefore need to have mechanisms in place that can be used to prove that products and services conform to the relevant technical regulations and standards that really help in securing the rights and obligations to a society.
Thus the international standards would provide many a benefit in contributing to society and these include rights to safety, security, health and access to information, as they do for global enterprises, governments and society at large.
The application of standards and conformity assessment would contribute to the overall benefit of stakeholders in providing the quality goods and services at competitive cost and also raise the level of confidence of the buyers and sellers. In fact, adoption of these quality standards would help to build the quality culture and finally to foster the development of global market for goods and services.
The Government of Pakistan has established Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA) as a national standards body, which is committed to play its multidimensional role in enhancing the systems of standardisation and quality control and in protection of consumer rights being the hallmark of any civilised society.
PSQCA has recently modernised its laboratories in Karachi and Lahore and also established the Consumer Liaisons offices in Islamabad and Karachi to facilitate the manufacturers all over the country of testing products according to Pakistan Standards, conforming to International Standards, and how to face the challenges of WTO.
PSQCA has also made significant strides to ensure safe, wholesome and unadulterated essential commodities to the consumers by regularly monitoring the quality of such products and also creating public awareness though advertisement in national and regional newspapers, electronics media, hoardings, seminars, symposia, conferences.
PSQCA has also established a toll free telephonic facility 0800-80000 for better interaction with the stakeholders in order to facilitate quality conscious and sceptical consumers. On receipt of telephonic report, the authority takes proper action for redressal thereof.
I wish Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA) a great success in celebrating the World Standards Day and appreciate its efforts towards increasing the awareness of quality among the people of Pakistan.
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