21 May 2011
THE Government will soon put in place a new legislative framework that will address the weaknesses identified in the area of scientific and legal meteorology in the National Quality Policy.
Acting Commerce Minister Catherine Namugala said the Government intended to put in place an institutional framework that would create a meteorology institute which would merge the meteorology functions currently sitting in the Zambia Bureau of Standards and the Zambia weights and Measures Agency.
Ms Namugala said the Government was aware that the measurement capabilities of a country reflected its level of development in several fields, including manufacturing and service sectors.
Ms Namugala, who was speaking during the commemoration of the World Meteorology Day yesterday, said the Government wanted to ensure that a national calibration service was established and maintained to diffuse national measurement standards into industry authorities and society.
“The Government is taking the standardisation, meteorology and accreditation seriously. We, therefore, require the full cooperation of all stakeholders,” Ms Namugala said.
She said to fully exploit export markets, Zambia needed to have internationally-recognised national quality infrastructure that could provide the required independent evidence of product compliance.
Ms Namugala said one of the challenges that Zambian industry faced was the lack of adherence to systematic and internationally-acceptable quality standards.
She said the Government recognised that the national quality infrastructure and technical regulation regime were not developed to their full potential.
“From the Government point of view, standards development and meteorology are a priority that greatly relate to our ability to be competitive as a country,” Ms Namugala said.
She said Zambian standards needed to be developed with the involvement of Zambian stakeholders to produce quality products that would be acceptable to local and export markets.
Ms Namugala said this year’s World Meteorology Day theme of ‘Chemical measurements for our life, our future’ sought to underscore the important role that measurements played in enhancing global and mutual recognition of analytical results.
She said meteorology had become even more important due to its role in quality control, traceability and certification.
And Zambia Bureau of Standards director Mataa Mukelabai said Zambia needed to develop adequate capacity in chemical meteorology to consolidate in gas measurements in support of the international comparability of gas standards for air quality and greenhouse monitoring.
Mr Mukelabai said there was need to understand and monitor the impact of materials being used on the environment, health and safety of the nation.He, however, said this was heavily dependent on the ability to make accurate measurements comparable to some widely accepted reference standards.
“It is essential for the nation to address and reduce uncertainties in time and frequency scales, more especially in the provision of the information and communication technologies,” he said.
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See original article:
State Checks Meteorological Weaknesses