SON Admonishes Electrical Products Dealers To Adhere To Standards

The Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) has reiterated the need for stakeholders in the electrical products sector to adhere to quality standards.

The Eagle reports that the SON Director-General, Mr Osita Aboloma made the reiteration yesterday at a stakeholders sensitisation workshop with Electrical/Electronics section of the Alaba international market at the SON offices in Lekki Lagos.

Aboloma said electrical products dealers needed to understand that they were dealing with life-threatening products adding that this called for care and caution in the standards.

He said as strategic entry points for such products into homes and offices, that there was need for the SON and the sector operators to constantly dialogue to as a way of checkmating the menace of substandard electrical products.

The SON DG said although the agency had a subsisting understanding with the market leadership on the need to trade on only standardised products, that there was also need to constantly interface with them in pursuance of the Zero Tolerance for substandard products.

“we cannot be bringing in substandard and unbranded products into the country to take advantage of the branded local ones, and expect our economy to grow. I will encourage you to develop your own brnad instead. Do the right thing and we will back you up”, he said.

He described the SON as a business facilitator of genuine Nigeria entrepreneurs, adding that once a company approaches the organisation adn demonstrates readiness to comply with the required standards, that it becomes the duty of the SON to guide such a company.

“We need you to be a quality vanguard, and once you are identified as being a standards ambassador, people will have confidence in your products. Let’s have a SON desk in the market; let us bring quality assurance closer to you”, he admonished.

In his response, the Executive Chairman of the group, Evangelist Paulinus Ugochukwu thanked the SON DG for receiving them adding that there had been a new change of attitude, especially since his assumption of office.

According to him, some people who hitherto lost confidence in Alaba were returning back and that his executive was resolved to sustaining the positive tempo.

He declared that there was no way they would not want to work with the SON as doing otherwise amounted to undermining their own businesses.

“Anybody faking products has no future in the market. I have my own brand in the market. Many others have their own brands in the market, and there is no way we would be supporting fake brands, because that will amount to our killing our own business” he said.

Ugochukwu declared: “we must work with you to improve the image of Alaba. We must bring down substandard products”, he said..

He added that many of his members had bought into the message of SON for standards and would stand with the agency to rid the market of substandard electrical products.