ByMustapha Jarju
The Gambia Standard Bureau with stakeholders has organized revitalization on standardization development of the technical committee of the bureau, with experts from different working institutions.
On Wednesday, experts from government institutions that have a role to play namely; Central Bank of the Gambia, GPPA, and PURA who are the regulators and the private players, as well as the consumers represented by the Gambia Chamber of Commerce and Industry came together to brainstormed on standardization development of the technical committee of the bureau.
Ebrima Musa Jallow, director of the Standardization Division at the Gambia Bureau of Standard, said the participants are also trained on the standard development procedures, the idea of standardization, and the benefit of standards.
“We also take them on a standard that we are intending to develop, which is a recently developed approved standard by ECOWAS member states called ECOWAS Harmonized Standards’ and they are the standards we reviewed with their approval to proceed to the necessary stages for national development,” he said.
Jallow added that in developing national standards there are stages that need to be followed and the stakeholders are already enlightened on the adoption of standards and how to domesticate them to suit local needs.
“If you look at the Gambia among other countries we are still growing in terms of standardization because countries like Ghana, and Nigeria have been into standardization before the Gambia and they have some facilities that the Gambia is yet to have, which include accredited laboratories among others,” he pointed out.
Jallow stated that the Gambia Standard Bureau has also developed very far as it has three divisions that are the Standardization Bureau, the Methodology, and the service that provides certification testing services.
“So far we are not able to test any product for a standard that is coming into the Gambia but we can facilitate the testing of products against the standard, so we are moving very fast to catch up with some of the countries in the sub-region,” he stated.
