The Ghana Standards Authority has inaugurated three technical committees with a call on members to bring their expertise and experiences to bear to enhance the operations of the organisation.
The members of the committees of Standards, Metrology and Conformity Assessment were sworn into office by the Board Chairman of the GSA Professor Felix Mills Robertson, who led members to take the official and secrecy oaths.
The committees would advise the board on technical matters, including the development of standards, assessment, and metrology.
Addressing members, Professor Alex Dodoo, the Director-General of the GSA, said the formation of the technical committees was in line with the GSA Act.
He said the purpose of these committees was to have technical experts from a broad spectrum of stakeholders and not based on political representation.
In this direction, he said the choice of members was based on practicalities with representation from industry, academia and GSA retired staff, who have institutional knowledge that nobody could take away from them and “So there are two former staff for each technical committee.
So each committee has one board member and one board technical committee member so that they can take the discussions of the committee to the technical committees.”
So the purpose of this committee is to be carefully established. It’s unusual that the government takes the best it can from standards, from testing, from inspection, from certification and from methodology. Indeed, as a country, the laws or the statutes of the country are for a country, not for any institution.
He urged the members of the committee to offer independent and impartial advice without fear of failure “because you are technical and you are here in your position based on your expertise.”
“We hope that these technical committees will improve governance within the GSA, so that management and the board can make decisions on a sound scientific, ethical and professional basis,” he said.
Besides, GSA wants to benefit from knowledge that is out there, especially the knowledge of the retired staff.
He said GSA also wanted to improve openness, especially for consumers.
Each technical committee is expected to choose its chairperson to ensure extreme transparency and openness.
“So, if you are a member of the national committee, the terms will be three years from now, and I think that’s about two terms. And we are hoping that you will bring your full, independent knowledge, expertise, of course, very limited expertise, like consumers or industry, to ensure that your voices are heard,” he added.
GNA
