COVID-19: JAMB introduces innovations for seamless service delivery 

THE Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board has introduced a number of innovations as proactive measures to protect both staff and clients, particularly tertiary education candidates at its various centres, while rendering seamless services to the public.

The board said this is in line with extant guidelines relating to physical and social distancing and other measures aimed at mitigating the spread of COVID-19.

JAMB in its Weekly Bulletin obtained in Abuja, noted that these innovations include the Appointment Booking Platform which requires a candidate to secure an online appointment before visiting the centres for any service to avoid crowding, and the One-Time Password (OTP) which temporarily replaces biometric verification via fingerprints.

Others are the installation of Disinfectant Tunnel Sprayers at the entrances to all offices and centres of the board to disinfect both staff and the public, and the introduction of SMA(R)T phone numbers for all the board’s offices and Professional Test Centres (PTC) across the country.

It said four of the innovations are ready to be rolled out: the Appointment Booking Platform, the One-Time Password, the Disinfectant Tunnel Sprayers and the SMA(R)T phone numbers.

“However, the board is rolling out the first of the innovations, which is the SMA(R)T phone numbers, in this edition of the bulletin and will roll out the others in subsequent editions.”

“As you may be aware, SMA(R)T phone numbers popularly called ‘vanity numbers’ in other climes are very easy to remember. SMA(R)T (Vanity) numbers are artificial numbers based on the letters of the beneficial owner of the number.

“The letters in the name of the owner are keyed once wherever they occur on the phone pad. For example, JAMB which is the name of the beneficiary in this instance would apart from 0700 which is the SMA(R)T-code in Nigeria (for non-toll-free) have “J” of JAMB on key “5”, “A” on key “2”, “M” on “6” and “B” on “2”.

“Consequently, all SMA(R)T JAMB number would include 5262. Therefore, all JAMB numbers in different offices are unified with 0700-5(J)2(A)6(M)2(B) before the 3 or 4 other numbers for the state or centre. This would make it easy for a candidate to remember the constant -0700-5262.

“These numbers are dedicated numbers meant to facilitate round-the-clock access to JAMB services. All JAMB SMA(R) phone lines would commence with ‘0700’, followed by ‘JAMB’ and then the first three letters of each state with the exception of one or two states that did not follow the sequence of the first three letters.

“For instance, Abia State would have ‘0700-JAMB-ABI’ as its phone number. Where a state office has a subsidiary, the letter of that subsidiary office would be captured to yield, for example, ‘0700-JAMB-BAO’ to indicate JAMB Bayelsa State Office, Otuoke Centre, as opposed to ‘0700-JAMB-BAY’ for the parent Office.

“However, to avoid clashes in interpreting the numbers, a few of the phone numbers of some subsidiary offices did not start with the first letter of their towns.

“The board is mindful of the fact that the normal 11-digit numbers are difficult to memorize but when it comes to SMART numbers, all a candidate needs to do is simply add the last three letters of the state capital of his choice to ‘0700-JAMB’.”

The board advised members of the public to note that these phone lines, while not toll-free, would be accessible on all networks.

Credit: Tribune