THE HARD WORK of developing quality infrastructure in the Caribbean is just starting to pay off.
That’s the view of quality expert, Pat Paladino, as he addressed a meeting of National Accreditation Focal Points (NAFP) officials from eight CARICOM countries in Barbados last week.
The workshop was an initiative under the Tenth European Development Fund-Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Programme, funded by the European Union and implemented by the CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards & Quality (CROSQ), the German Metrology Institute and the Dominican Institute for Quality.
Paladino was one of the trainers at the workshop, which was led by accreditation consultant and trainer Claudette Brown.
Paladino noted that the global market was moving ahead in areas requiring product tested by labs accredited by an accreditation body that is a signatory to international accreditation agreements. Failure to meet the international requirements could result in a close-out for products of the Caribbean, he noted.
“Developed markets set the rules and they’ve embraced the international accreditation system. If the Caribbean can’t meet these rules, our businesses and exporters are not going to be able to do business in these markets. Also, if the region is unable to provide recognised accreditation and conformity assessment services, then businesses and manufacturers will have to look outside the region to be able to have their products tested,” he remarked.
“Typically, businesses would have to go to the US, Canada or Europe and the cost of testing in these countries is probably ten or 20 times the cost of doing it here, if we had the capabilities. That’s pretty significant for these manufacturers.”
The expert, who is a former president of the Inter-American Accreditation Cooperation, the internationally recognised association of accreditation bodies in the Americas and other organisations interested in conformity assessment, said this was why the work of CROSQ and the national standards bodies of the region was so important to mitigating some of the international risks.
“All the hard work is finally starting to pay off. There was a slow start getting people on board, knowledgeable and trained, but today we have an accreditation body that is already recognised internationally,” he said. (PR)