Davao City—Driven by the vision to continuously upgrade service excellence, the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) here pursued a revisit of the International Standards Organization (ISO) 9001-2000 on Quality Management Systems (QMS) held at the Port Management Office (PMO)-Davao on the last week of November.
The reorientation on the ISO standards was attended jointly by officials of the PPA head office in Manila and representatives from the PMO-Davao and the Port District Office-Southern Mindanao (PDO-SoMin), majority of whom will be directly involved in frontline services.
“Our quest for an ISO certification is tangible proof of our commitment to make the ports competitive both in the domestic and the foreign arena,” SoMin port district manager Abdussabor Sawadjaan revealed referring to PPA’s 2010 vision of meeting international standards in port facilities and services.
Best practices of public corporate agencies like PPA are being closely monitored to conform to world standards as their markets open up to stiffer competitions here and abroad.
PPA is seeking for an international accreditation of the port entry and exit system which is known as the vessel entrance and clearance (VEC) procedure of all its major baseports starting in Batangas in Luzon Southern as the pilot case.
PMO-Batangas is targeting to secure its ISO 9001-2000 certification in January 2010. It is currently undergoing the final stages of internal audit and documentation of its VEC procedures.
The PMO-Davao is hoping to beat, if not, expedite its September 2010 deadline for the grant ISO accreditation given that the templates by then have already been laid by Batangas.
An ISO certificate is issued by the ISO, an independent alliance of standards setting bodies based in Geneva, Switzerland and is known as the world’s largest developer and publisher of international standards.
QMS refers to the organizational structure, responsibilities, procedures, processes and resources to implement a service or come up with a product.
ISO 9001-2000 in particular embodies an organization’s Smart Management Practices (SMP) which refers to a series of predictable and internationally understood process language in product creation or service delivery.
Last year, the Philippine government issued Executive Order No. 605 pushing for the Government Quality Management Program (GQMP). This directive is geared towards debureacratizing or simplifying the workflow and frontline services needed by the public at the same time enhancing the national competitiveness to be at par with other developed countries.
Standardization of processes is a priority especially at the baseports or the PMO level because of the volume of port users regularly transacting business for and in behalf of domestic and foreign-going vessels there.
VEC procedures of the 23 PPA baseports particularly involve core processes, such as entrance formalities, assessment, collection, and departure clearance.
Taking off from 2007’s course, Mr. Rene Julian, the Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) transport group consultant once again conducted this year’s five-day revisit on ISO 9001-2000 standards and orientation on VEC to make PPA worthy of an ISO nod in 2010.
For the PPA in general, an ISO accreditation will also increase its service efficiency by reducing waiting time at the assessment and payment counters which could be translated to gained opportunity cost for its customers. It targets an estimated 30 maximum minutes to complete transaction once it will be able to standardize its VEC. (PIA)
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