Tamunosaki Omiete
COTECNA, a Leading Company that provides testing, inspection and certification services in Nigeria has reassured its commitment in the verification of conformity of imported goods and issuance of certificate of conformity in Nigeria.
Ms Lena Sodergren, the Group Vice President, COTECNA Inspections S.A based in Geneva, Switzerland gave the assurance in an interview with Journalists in Port Harcourt.
Sodergren stated that COTECNA is an international Company that operates on testing, inspection, certification of commodities, such as Agric. products, Food Safety, Minerals and any kind of consumable coming in and out of countries.
COTECNA was on February,13, 2013, appointed by the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) to join and assist in its conformity assessment programme called SONCAP.
SONCAP programme was introduced by the Federal Government of Nigeria to address the concern of substandard products entering the country.
COTECNA carries out the verification of conformity of imported goods and issues certificates of conformity in the country of origin.
According to Sodergren, COTECNA has been privileged to work with SON for almost ten (10) years in what SON called the SONCAP programme which is in Conformity Assessment Programme where COTECNA intervene globally for products been imported into Nigeria.
Sodergren stated that the company would continue to assist; support traders and SON to control compliance in Nigerian standard from countries like China, Dubai, India, Europe and anywhere in the world coming into Nigeria with compliance standard.
“We are kind of a third party, sub contracted services for the global certification services for Nigeria, and we are an Accredited Inspection Company, a part of the team to achieve conformity in the Nigerian standard.
“We are normally contacted by the traders themselves who knows that they have to come to us, but we could always do awareness campaign in the countries of exports such as China and Dubai, the traders will contact us and they will submit their documentation and submit their goods for our inspection.
“So we will proceed with our laboratory testing that is needed, once we compare those products and the test results to the Nigerian standard we can say it’s OK and then issue certificates to the traders to ship their goods.
The certificate is then valid for Customs clearance as required here in Nigeria.
Our objective is always to protect consumers, Nigeria put this programme in place to protect the consumers and industries against unfair competition, so our role is to help SON with that very important task,”Sodergren stated.
According to her, sub standard good always have high cost, than compliant goods, its very tempting to buy low quality products, sometimes people do not check whether the goods are certified, but in the end, it’s always more expensive for the unfair competition.
“The consumers might have to re-buy the same product because they got broken quickly. For the health of the consumers, nothing is more Precious to us than health.
“You can’t purchase that in money anyway, I mean unsafe toys for our children cannot be measured in money; so its supper important that consumers as well are not only asked to control institutions as we are to ensure that it’s not only controlled in goods, but also ensuring that we are not buying them,” she said.
She urged consumers to be very careful before they patronize industries or Manufacturers of substandard products in the country.
