By Isatou Jallow
The Gambia Standard Bureau in collaboration with the West Africa competitive programme (WACOMP) on Monday 30th may 2022 inaugurated sub-committee during a one-day meeting with various stakeholders.
The objective of the meeting was to develop a framework for the development of the national standards for onion and its related value chain. The convergence that brought experts together from the Agricultural value chain was funded by the European Union (EU) and under the United Nations industrial development organization (UNIDO).
Speaking, at the forum, Mr Christian Lasser, project administrator of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization said they organised the program to increase competitiveness through enhanced quality and compliance along the onion value chain, improve the performance, growth and contribution to industry, regional trade and exports of selected value chain and improve the climate for business at national and regional levels.
“As part of the projects, the output is to strengthen technical capacity of the Gambia Standards bureau and support in the development of relevant national standards, the Bureau has been tasked and supported by the project to develop and publish standards on onion and its value chain,” he disclosed.
According to him, the standard will cover specification of onion, good Agricultural practices, good manufacturing practices, handing and storage, labelling and packaging. He finally said that the TC will review different reputable international standards and adopt those that suit the Gambian context.
Director of Standardization Division, Mr Ebrima Musa Jallow said one of the mandates of the Gambia standard bureau is to standardise all products and services consume or produce in the Gambia, therefore any product that is produce in the Gambia is their mandate to standardise the product even when the Gambia don’t have the capacity to produce the product but they are importing.
Also, he noted, “It is our mandate to standardise that product or services, so one of the divisions that they have to be able to know is standardization division. He said the Bureau is responsible for the development of all standards across all sectors and also promoting the standard in promoting the standard we conduct trainings they also conduct sensitization activities and some other media publicity.
“The next division that will also help them attain this is the conformed activities of the bureau it is responsible for conducting the instruction to see whether that particular need a conform or not that have been publish then when they do the instruction, they could verify the second event in the event a product cannot be verified physically it needs the services of elaborations the coverage assessment also do the testing services,” he said.