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Experts urge TBS to have its laboratories accredited
2007-09-27 09:35:08
By Patrick Kisembo
A delegation of experts from eight African countries attending a seminar on World Trade Conformity Assessment, Quality Infrastructure Development have advised Tanzania to speed up accreditation of its remaining laboratories with a view to enhancing their standards.
The views were expressed yesterday when the delegation of more than 20 people toured the Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) to see for themselves how the bureau`s laboratories functioned.
A delegate, Agust Jonsson from SWEDC, who is also coordinator of the training programme, inquired whether all the bureau`s laboratories were accredited.
Responding to the question, TBS Acting Director Charles Ekelege said the bureau was facing a major challenge in ensuring that all its laboratories were accredited.
``The major challenge I have is to ensure that all the laboratories get accreditation,`` he said.
He told the delegates from Sweden, Iceland, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Zambia that the bureau had seven laboratories out of which only one had been accredited.
The accredited laboratory was for metrology, the fourth laboratory to get accreditation in Africa after those in Kenya, South Africa and Egypt.
Ekelege said it was difficult to have all of them accredited at once due to lack of resources and lack of a national accreditation council in the country.
``However, the food laboratory is in its final stages of being accredited and we hope it will be accredited before the end of this year following recommendations from the South Africa National Accreditation System (SANAS),`` he said.
He said the packaging section was also a problem in ensuring that goods of high quality were produced and packaged to internationally acceptable standards.
He said Tanzania had to go for international standards because international trade did not discriminate between developed and developing country.
``That is why we have experts and use technical committees to adopt international standards,`` Ekelege said, adding, ``We do not want Tanzanian standards to be a barrier to international trade,``he noted.
A delegate from Zambia, Kimon Zulu, who is also director general of Western Weights Measure Agency, urged all developing countries to have a common voice when preparing international standards.
He said a majority of developing countries did not have their own standards because they were not heard at international committees.
Zulu said there was need for developing countries to invest in research and formulate their own standards out of research they had made to be accepted internationally instead of depending on standards prepared by developed countries.
A delegate from Rwanda, Nyamvumba Jane from the Rwanda Bureau of Standards, said althought the bureau was still young they had managed to come up with some standards.
``The RBS started in 2002, but we are growing fast because we are supported by members of the East African Community since we are on the EAC committee,`` she said.
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