World Standards Day is being celebrated to mark the birth of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), which held its first meeting in London on October 14, 1946, with an initial roster of 25 countries.
ISO (based in Geneva, Switzerland) now has 147 member nations and has evolved into the global clearinghouse for all standards activities. The "World Standards Day" is being celebrated annually by member countries of International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and International Telecommunications Union (ITU) with a view to create awareness about the importance and impact of standards on our society.
The theme of the World Standards Day for this year 2007 is "Standards and the Citizen: Contributing to Society" which is more relevant when our world has been changed in a global village that brings a broad range of rights and obligations to its citizens, these include rights to Safety, security, health and access to information.
Obligation includes protecting the environment and respecting the safety, property and privacy of others. Improvement toward quality consciousness for development of standardisation/quality culture is really helpful to the citizen world-wide to exercise these rights and obligations in safe, secure and healthy atmosphere.
Clearly the quality culture is possible in the Society only when all the three stakeholders, the manufacturers, distributors and consumers of goods and services pursue common objectives, goals and aspiration.
The awareness on standardisation/quality at government and private sector level is key element towards sustainable development. The improvement of the quality of goods and services and the promotion of the best management practices is equally important.
Basically, Standardisation is instrumental in the creation of order in our technical world. Rather in broad sense we may say, it is an integral part of the existing economic, social and legal structure.
Therefore, the Standards play a very important and crucial role in modern technology as well as in agriculture sector of the country where they provide acceptable norms and guidelines for determining the quality and serviceability of raw materials, finished product and process.
The standards are to make life easier, comfortable, secure and convenient and its key concepts are safety, regularity, protection of future, reassurance and ultimately happiness of those who are inhabiting the globe. Standards are essential components of trade, commerce and the diffusion of technology.
At present, there are over 120000 international standards and annually 10000 new standards are added to this list, thus implying the need for the development of global society. PSQCA feeling the importance of globalisation has directly adopted through SRO-134(KE)/2002 December 2, 2002, most of ISO & IEC Standards as Pakistan Standards, exceeding more than 20000 that cover most of the products, services and trade are required to cover the need of our industry and consumers.
Pakistan Standards now have reached to about 25800 generally conforming to the WTO regime, National Standards formulated by PSQCA are 4800, adopted ISO Standards as Pakistan Standards: 15000 and adopted ISO Standards as Pakistan Standards 6000.
It is indeed a matter of immense pleasure for Pakistan Standards Quality Control Authority (PSQCA) being the national standards body to take an active part in the "World Standards Day" by publishing special supplements in the national and regional newspapers to create quality consciousness and raise the level of awareness about the requirements and impact of standards in our daily life. Audio/Video and electronic media channels will also highlight the importance of the day in their live programmes.
The process of standardisation is usually costly and time-consuming, but also indispensable and vital. Conformity Assessment provides confidence to users that the requirements applicable to products, services and systems have been met.
Such confidence, in turn, directly contributes to the market acceptance of those products, services and system standardisation is as such one of the most rapidly progressing areas in the economy of any country. The World Standards Day - 2007 is to understand that we need to equip ourselves with scientific and technical knowledge and to be part of globally accepted quality conformity and certification systems to overcome Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) being faced under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) regime.
I am sure that the theme of the World Standards Day - 2007 will really help in promoting and improving quality products for domestic consumers as well as for people abroad by adopting standardisation and quality control systems in trade and industry and such standardisation and quality control systems will play a vital role in contributing the society to provide protection for safe, secure and healthy atmosphere in exercising their rights and obligation because the standards are indicators of quality, safety, reliability, efficiency & interchangeability at an economical cost, they provide a level playing field for all competitors in regional and global markets, generating confidence that entrepreneurs are free to compete anywhere in the global market.
The PSQCA has also established Consumer Liaison Offices to co-ordinate with the national and international consumers associations for standardisation and consumers affairs. National Certification Body (NCB) is being established under the aegis of PSQCA to overcome the technical barriers to trade (TBT) and Sanitary/photo-sanitary (SPS) barriers being faced by local SME sector in international trade.
The NCB will mainly focus on providing QMS Certification to Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) sector as well as the to the industry of the country with a view to provide sound economic and business principles. PSQCA is also set to opertionalize Mobile testing laboratory for on the site testing of compulsory products and control in open markets and bazars.
PSQCA has already inaugurated National Enquiry Point as a pre-requisite of the WTO/TBT agreement which will be an on-line service to the importers and exporters. In order to up-grade and undertake modernisation of the PSQCA Laboratories and offices a multi-storied building of PSQCA Office Complex is in completion stages in Gulistan-e-Johar, Karachi at the cost of Rs 180 million.
The complex laboratory will be equipped with state-of-the-art machinery and equipment's in order to provide testing facilities to the manufacturers of all indigenous industrial articles/products in the country so that the requirements of national and international trade are adequately met.
The PSQCA recently conducted an IRCA registered ISO 9001-2000 Lead Auditor Training Course to promote the quality Awareness and culture in Pakistan and ensure availability of qualified and other management system professionals and auditors in Pakistan.
The World Standards Day provides an opportunity to PSQCA to sensitise the people and move towards fulfilling its responsibilities with zeal and faithfulness; PSQCA commits itself to meet the future challenges by utilising all the available resources and capabilities.
The PSQCA being a national standards body intend to play a proactive role to protect not only the rights of the consumers but is ready to facilitate the growing business of industrial sector to compete in the global market on the basis of standards and quality products.
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