Time to enforce standards is now

Today is World Standards Day and it is being marked to harp on the importance of synchronising standards in all parts of the world and acknowledge the singular significance of standardisation to the world economy.

Standards and weights, whether in Europe, Africa or the Americas, have a direct linkage with quality and are meant to be the same to ensure good health, protect consumers and ensure fairness in all business transactions.

Unfortunately, despite the 1,600 indigenous standards and over 3,500 adopted international standards in Ghana currently, enforcement is a challenge, resulting in people using differing forms of standards and weights for the same products, equipment and services.

This trend poses a danger to all, especially when it is in connection with health, electrical, electronic and food products, which is why the Daily Graphic believes there could be no better time than now to ensure the enforcement of standards in all sectors.

We believe that as a country, we have not done too well when it comes to enforcing even the standards that have been generated locally, let alone the global ones that have been adopted.

The Ghana Standards Authority (GSA), which is tasked with ensuring compliance with standards, must be resourced adequately to enable it to consistently and timeously inform the public and industry players about current standards and how they must be applied to meet global standards.

This, we believe, will strengthen the GSA to enforce those standards and bring recalcitrant users of standards to book, while ensuring trust among consumers and facilitating fair commerce.

The lack of enforcement of standards is what, on some occasions, resulted in products from Ghana being rejected on the world market.

In order to put an end to the embarrassment that the country experiences when goods are rejected, the Daily Graphic calls for special attention to be focused on our standards.

As Ghana joins the rest of the world to mark World Standards Day, which throws the spotlight on video technology on the theme: “Video standards create a global stage”, we believe a lot could be learnt from the success of the application of video standards.

It is due to compliance with world-accepted standards that video sharing, even on social media, has become very easy.

Hitherto, the sheer size of videos prevented transfer through any electronic means.

Video has now become more accessible, helping people worldwide to share their stories in vivid and moving pictures, with instantaneous and almost global response and feedback.

These gains in both sophistication and accessibility of video are built on International Standards.

In fact, without video standards, the sharing of moments on social media apps such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, etc, would have been impossible. Video standards have made our world a much better place and created millions of jobs worldwide.

We, therefore, pray for effective collaboration among the GSA, the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), the National Communications Authority, the National Film and
Television Institute, the Gaming Commission, the National Commission for Civic Education and other stakeholders to see how best video technology can be adapted for use in the country's development efforts.