5th National Quality Awards: GNBS promoting competitiveness within local business community

More businesses are becoming inspired to pay attention to quality control systems, as the Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS) gears up to host its fifth annual National Quality Awards (NQA) ceremony.
The National Quality Awards (NQA) Programme, launched in 2017 by the GNBS is the country’s first quality systems-based awards programme. It recognises local companies that demonstrate excellence in applying standards and quality systems in the production of goods and delivery of services.
The NQA is hosted biennially during National Quality Week in October 14, which aligns with World Standards Day.
On Tuesday, the Bureau launched its fifth National Quality Awards (NQA) Speaking at the launch event was Executive Director of the GNBS Trevor Bassoo, who highlighted the bureau’s commitment towards empowering local businesses.
“And we support those businesses more specifically that has an interest in, a desire to, and a want to adopt standards to help with the improvement of their business processes, their products itself, and the services that they offer. And we are here to support those businesses as they strive for excellence.”
In fact, he revealed that the NQA is not just an award ceremony but a strategic initiative that aims to foster a sense of quality and standards within the local business community.
“But let’s add a little more the National Quality Award gives successful businesses a sense of pride and beyond that, it allows for other businesses to be inspired. So, those who will be participating will give their competitors and their partners and their other alliances out there an opportunity to be inspired and joined for future National Quality Awards.”
Also present at the launch event was President of the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association (GMSA) Ramsay Ali who lauded the Government for investing into the improvement of business standards within the country.
“For many, many years, BSOs like GMSA and other member of the private sector organisations have been lobbying for improvement of standards in this country…Because if you go back 20 years, many companies in this country would have had to seek external assistance or whatever to do for the validation of their products and it’s good to see that over the years, the monetary allocations to agencies like GNBS have significantly increased.”
On this point he made a call to action to stakeholders from within the business sector to encourage more small businesses to be a part of the NQA.
“But I really would like to encourage it and do this for the GMSA and the other BSOs too. To really champion the small businesses in this country to get on board with this programme. Because it’s important for their businesses when you can say, look, I participated in this system i was given this award it will help their products, it will help their companies, it will help their development.”
The president added, “if we can, to get as much of our smaller business on board. I think it’s going to benefit them more significantly.”
Moreover, geared at improving standards within the business community, the GNBS provided technical assistance to 79 organisations last year. Additionally, some 924 persons were trained under the bureau in several areas such as management systems and health and safety among others. Notably through its National Standards Council (NSC) the GNBS had approved a total of 33 standards.