POLICY ON INDEPENDENCE AND IMPARTIALITY

DQS Nigeria, its assessment and review personnel are obliged to conduct their evaluations and reviews with the highest professional reliability and the required technical knowledge and competence. By way of internal regulations and processes, they are protected and at all times remain free from any possible influence with regards to their evaluation or review of results, especially from persons or groups interested in the results of the respective evaluation or review. This also applies without any restrictions to any possible influence of financial nature.

DQS Nigeria warrants the independence of its personnel in charge of the reviews. The volume of payment to any person taking part in the certification decision-making is neither related to the number of reviews conducted nor is it related to the review results.

DQS Nigeria commits itself to impartiality in the conduction of its certification activities and ensures that any conflicts of interest are identified, analyzed, and eliminated so that the objectivity of its certification activities is fulfilled at all times. The detailed DQS Nigeria Policy on Independence and Impartiality shall be provided on request.

The DQS Impartiality Committee consists of representatives from interested parties, associations, clients, and customers of clients, whose main function is to ensure the impartiality of DQS (Pty) Ltd. in accordance with ISO/IEC 17021-1:2015. This committee meets annually to conduct a review of the impartiality of the audit, certification, and decision-making process of DQS as a certification body, with the provision that a second meeting may be scheduled to allow for additional engagement and dealing with follow-up issues.

The Impartiality Committee can be contacted on the customer feedback page regarding any impartiality-related complaints or queries. To serve on the DQS Impartiality Committee, submit your request on the customer feedback page.

POLICY ON HANDLING COMPLAINTS AND APPEALS

The management of the DQS Nigeria commits itself to effective, efficient, and customer-oriented treatment of complaints and appeals. The procedure for handling complaints and appeals is well known by all personnel and is accessible to customers and other interested parties. Our goal is to work on complaints to the satisfaction of the complainant by way of applying a customer-oriented approach.

Feedback from customers, which also includes complaints, is considered an opportunity for improvement of our services. For this reason, DQS Nigeria is open to all feedback, including complaints, and shows an appropriate commitment during the processing of complaints and actions taken.