National Coordinator, SERVICOM services, Mrs. Nnenna Akajemeli,   has awarded a fair grade in service delivery to the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control NAFDAC, while presenting the SERVICOM compliance evaluation report to NAFDAC management in Abuja.

She urged NAFDAC to improve on its service delivery nationwide as the report emanated from the evaluation of eight NAFDAC offices across the country-Lagos, Bauchi, Oyo, Enugu, Plateau, Rivers, Kaduna and Abuja.

“The objective of the SERVICOM compliance evaluation is to ensure citizen focused service delivery in MDAs, identifying gaps in service delivery and making recommendations to MDAs to improve customer satisfaction and accountability.

“We have a set of Key Performance Indicators, designed to become the standard to help MDAs measure their performance in terms of customer satisfaction and improved service delivery.

“All the evaluated eight windows ranked two star which equals fair giving an average of fair grade which needs to be improved upon for customer satisfaction.

“It is our belief that the service windows concerned would ensure continuous improvement of quality of service delivered to their customers when the recommendations are truly implemented.’’

According to Akajemeli, evidence for the report was gathered through customer interviews, discussion with NAFDAC staff, mystery shopping (a SERVICOM staff pretends to be a customer to acquire information) desk research.

She noted that the evaluation showed that NAFDAC was inconsistent in the use of consultants to facilitate procurement of services to customers, lack of training for staff, inadequate inspection vehicles.

She added that attitudes of some security men at the gate was not customer sensitive, delays in obtaining NAFDAC number for customer’s products, also littering of fake and expired drugs seized from patent medicine sellers in Kaduna office.

The SERVICOM boss, however, commended NAFDAC for the zeal demonstrated by staff to work, displaying information on how to register on their websites and on request without charges also for the certification of their laboratories.

She also commended NAFDAC for their efforts in partnering with relevant organizations like Standard Organization of Nigeria, Nigeria Drug Law Enforcement Agencies and others in order to achieve their mandate.

Her recommendations were as follows; “NAFDAC should ensure that their service charter is reviewed and widely circulated for the benefit of both staff and customers.

“There should be quarterly consultations with their stakeholders to ensure sustained improvements and encourage good relationship, precise and detailed targets should be set for all staff to effectively monitor performance.

“Staff should be encouraged to give feedback on services and speak out on issues,’’ Akajemeli said.

Mr. Ademola Mogbojuri, Acting Director General, NAFDAC, said the organization initiated move to reduce the number of days it uses in addressing issues to avoid hitches and promote service delivery with a goal to see that NAFDAC is not only walking but flying in carrying out its functions to ensure customer satisfaction.

In his words “We accept the evaluation and the grade we were scored and I assure you that we are aware of these problems and we are working towards achieving a three star score. We want more regular evaluation to help us improve on our activities and to easily identify gaps”.