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03/02/2004

Press Release

OECS Metrology Capacity Project

BY year-end bureaus of standards across the Eastern Caribbean should be operating to higher standards.

This is coming thanks to the USAID-funded Caribbean Trade and Competitiveness Development Program (C-TRADECOM) which has designed a project aimed at enhancing metrology capabilities in the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts/Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines along with Montserrat.

The project will see staff members at national bureaus receiving training in the operation, calibration and maintenance of metrology instruments and will also assist with the purchase of critical pieces of equipment to replace the out-moded weights and measuring standards still being used in some states.

The project is key to the region meeting international standards for trade as well as ISO 9000 and HACCP quality requirements, which mandate that all critical measurement devices must be calibrated in a way that allows their readings to be traced back to established international standard values.

Because of the critical link between metrology and trade, the Caribbean Regional Organization for Standards and Quality (CROSQ) is mandated to assist CARICOM countries to improve their metrology capabilities and it is against this background that C-TRADECOM is working with this regional agency.

Ronald Dubrisingh, C-TRADECOM's Competitiveness Director, said the project was an important one since “for OECS countries to enjoy rules based local trading environments and to participate fully in international trade they must possess the capacity to verify and calibrate weighing and measuring equipment used in trade”.

Presently this is being hampered in the OECS because of the lack of national standards, lack of trained personnel, inadequate expertise in metrology function and lack of equipment for the verification of instruments used in trade.

Two consultants, an international expert and a regional expert will be retained in the first phase of this project to jointly undertake a needs assessment and to advise on the establishment of the basic metrology on each island. In the second phase of the project the regional expert will provide training in metrology to staff of the standards bureaus and assist the bureaus to set up, operate and calibrate measuring instruments.

The project should be completed by August.

For further information contact: balsop@carana.com