The Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON) has said that it has through its Small and Medium Enterprise Department developed a programme to partner with states willing to work with it to help small-scale industries build their capacities.
The Director-General of SON, Mallam Farouk Salim who disclosed this at a one day SON capacity building workshop for journalists held in Lagos on Tuesday with the theme, “Improved Synergy to Promote Standardization”, stated that they had gone round to governors around the country who had donated lands to the organization because they understood its importance.
He recalled that there were about 40 million small-scale industries in Nigeria saying that was the backbone of Nigerian economy as these industries employed more than fifty to sixty percent of the Nigerian labour force.
Salim, while stating that SON already had Memorandum of Understanding with Katsina State in this regard as it was the first to sign the agreement with them said, “What we do is we go in, we train small scale industries on how to produce their goods cleanly, how to level the goods, how to market them, how to package them because in any of these aspect, if they are not done right, the goods will not be done well.”
He further revealed that four states namely; Jigawa, Kano, Bauchi and Sokoto states were in the process of signing MOU with SON so that it could help those areas to have individuals who would produce things and employ people.
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He said, “One of the biggest problem we have in this country is youth unemployment both educated and uneducated. There are not enough jobs in the federal government, there are not enough jobs in these various industries, so, we need to encourage small scale producers for even the youths to be part of the small scale industries so that the country can be lifted and unemployment will be minimal and we have less chaos.”
The Director General added that SON had one of the most sophisticated facilities in the country explaining that it recently acquired laboratories that were accredited in paint, electrical and food and nutrition even as he assured that they would continue to build capacities.
Salim went on to say that with the help of the federal government, they were building new laboratories; new offices where they made sure that their activities reached every nooks and crannies of this country.
On the challenges facing the organization, he said, “We have our issues which are operational issues. We need more equipment; we need more vehicles, more accommodations. We are building more offices across the country, we will continue building but we need resources to do that.
We are working very hard raise more resources to collaborate with the industries so that they can do their corporate responsibility jobs. It is nothing wrong with the industries to help an organization that helps the industries. So, we are campaigning, we are making sure that the industry realizes that together we work as a group.”
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