National Assembly |07 July 2022

The IAC review the country’s status on biosecurity and biosafety legislation

The International Affairs Committee (IAC) of the National Assembly of Seychelles recently held a series of meetings on Seychelles' biosafety and biosecurity status with the relevant stakeholders.

The aim of the meetings was for the Committee to gain a better overview and understanding of the country's status on biosecurity and biosafety legislation, enabling the IAC to better exercise its oversight role. This was done through a series of presentations where the entities respectively briefed the Committee about their governing international laws for biosecurity and biosafety, the capacity status of their entities administration to manage the situation in times of crisis. The committee was also apprised of their respective challenges.

The presentations were very informative and the members were very interested to learn of the various positions of the different entities in relation to their specific core function as well as the overlapping roles.

A second round of meetings was jointly agreed to give members time to go through the respective presentations and at a later date organise follow-up meetings.

The senior officials representing the stakeholders at the meeting were Daniel Cetoupe, the principal disaster management officer from the Division and Risk and Disaster Management (DRDM); the principal secretary of the Seychelles Agricultural Agency (SAA), Kevin Nancy; director regulatory and registration unit, Geralda Didon of Public Health Authority (PHA) and the CEO of the Seychelles Bureau of Standards (SBS) Andy Ally. All members of the IAC were present at the meeting.

The accompanying photos show the IAC members and stakeholders’ representatives during the meeting.

Press release from the National Assembly secretariat