SBS scoops prestigious SADC accreditation award |25 March 2022
The National Accreditation Focal Points (NAFPs) for Seychelles located at the Seychelles Bureau of Standard at Providence has scooped the Southern African Development Community Accreditation Services 2022 Award for the ‘Most Effective NAFP’ in the region.
The decision to award the 2022 Certificates of Recognition to NAFP Seychelles was made at the 73rd Southern African Development Community Accreditation Services (Sadcas) board of directors meeting held virtually on February 17, 2022 while the official announcement was made by Maureen P. Mutasa, the chief executive of Sadcas during its 17th annual general meeting held virtually on March 16, 2022.
The SBS, as the country’s representative/member of Sadcas, was designated to become the National Accreditation Focal Point for Seychelles (NAFP Seychelles). Dr Sreekala Nair, the deputy chief executive of the SBS, was appointed in the role as the 1st NAFP Seychelles in 2020 along with Corina Chang-Ty-Sing, a micro biologist (2nd NAFP) by Andy Ally, the chief executive of the SBS in his capacity as the NAFP supervisor and ordinary member of Sadcas.
Sadcas is a multi-economy accreditation body established in terms of Article 15 B of the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Annex to the SADC Protocol on Trade with the primary purpose of ensuring that conformity assessment service providers operating in those SADC member states which do not have national accreditation bodies are subject to an oversight by an authoritative body.
In a press conference yesterday morning, the SBS team expressed their joy at winning the award and talked about its importance for the country.
Mr Ally said: “Receiving the award is a great achievement for the NAFP Seychelles. It is the first time that we receive such a prestigious award and this is the fruit of the hard work that the NAFP Seychelles team has been doing.”
As the NAFP supervisor Mr Ally says he works in close collaboration with the NAFP team to realise the NAFP agenda at the SADC level.
Mr Ally noted that 14 out of the 16 SADC member countries rely entirely on SADC‘s Sadcas for all its accreditation services as other than South Africa and Mauritius, the remaining 14 member states, including Seychelles, do not have an accreditation body.
Mr Ally went on to explain that the SBS abides by all the requirements of the Sadcas including submitting its annual action plan and quarterly reports which are assessed and evaluated as per different criteria to determine if implementation is in line with Sadcas objectives.
He said a quarterly status of each country’s performance is also issued and Seychelles has been performing remarkably well.
“It is for this reason when comes the end of December, all the different countries’ quarterly reports are further analysed to see what each member country has been doing to further encourage and promote accreditation and highlight its importance among regulators and at government level in their respective countries. The aim to have a higher level of accreditation at SADC and the regional level is to increase trade confidence among countries, facilitate, increase and boost intra-SADC trade,” Mr Ally added.
For her part Dr Nair also noted that the award is a very prestigious one for NAFP Seychelles.
“NAFP Seychelles was chosen among 16 other member states and five criteria were used to make the selection and NAFP Seychelles scored 96.6 out of 100 to be the best performer and we are very happy. With a total score of 93.4 out of 100, NAFP-Botswana was selected for the 2022 ‘Most Improved NAFP Award,” Dr Nair said.
She said the main responsibility of a NAFP is to coordinate, administer, promote and market accreditation in a country.
“But why is a NAFP in a country very important? In Seychelles we do not have a national accreditation body and it is not cost-effective to have one. It was decided that SADC set up a regional accreditation body and it is the first in the whole world. Accreditation is very important for our country as our economy depends a lot on fish exports and one of the requirements of the European Union directives is that fish exported to the EU are tested in an accredited laboratory and this is why the two laboratories at the SBS has accredited its fish tests,” Dr Nair said.
She further stressed that it is important to have a NAFP to coordinate accreditation needs, to identify training needs related to accreditation and to communicate these to the accreditation body so that we can benefit from training and capacity building.
Marie-Anne Lepathy