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New equipment to enhance TBS quality
infrastructure
The Tanzania Bureau of Standards
(TBS) has acquired new state-of-the-art
testing and calibration
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equipment under
the Project on Trade Capacity Building:
Enhancing the Capacities of the
Tanzanian Quality Infrastructure and TBT/SPS
Compliance Systems for Trade.
The objective of the project which is
funded by the Swiss State Secretariat
for Economic Affairs (SECO) and
implemented by the United Nations
Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO),
is to improve the capacities of the
Tanzanian quality infrastructure to meet
the domestic and export market demands
on product quality and safety.
The equipment are meant for the
Metrology Laboratory, the Food
Laboratory and the Packaging Technology
Centre (PTC) and are worth € 578,921.
They include the metrology equipment for
pressure, dimensions and electrical
measurements and the mobile calibration
unit.
Others are climate chamber, migration
testing facility, head-space measurement
facility, oxygen analyzer, portable
spectroradiometer and pin-hole tester,
for the consumer packaging section of
the PTC; and the High Performance Liquid
Chromatography (HPLC) which will be used
for analysis of the quality of food
product samples at the Food Laboratory.
The new equipment will enhance TBS
capability in providing testing and
certification of packages, analyzing the
quality of food stuffs and calibration
of measurement standards and precision
instruments in various fields of
measurements.
The mobile calibration unit will soon be
providing on-site fast and convenient
services at the customer’s location,
thus ensuring promptness, saving time
and averting transport costs on the part
of the customer.
Industrialists all over the world are
realizing the importance of calibration
in maintaining traceability and quality
of operations. Tanzania is no exception
in this trend and the TBS Metrology
Laboratory - the Custodian of National
Measurement Standards - has realized the
importance of equipping itself with
prompt calibration facility.
The laboratory is already accredited to
ISO 17025, General requirements for the
competence of testing and calibration
laboratories, since December 15, 2006,
being the first laboratory in Tanzania
to reach such a step and subsequently
becoming capable of releasing authentic
test reports which are recognized
throughout the world. The mobile
calibration unit and the pressure,
dimensions and electrical measurements
devices add to the already excelling
capability of the laboratory.
On the part of the PTC, the equipment
will be a catalyst towards the
implementation of the main objectives
for establishing the centre, one of
which is to support a coordinated
development of the packaging industry by
strengthening the existing
standardization and testing capability
in the area of packaging. Other main
objectives which will now be realized
include the offering of training on
structural and graphic design of
packages, provision of third party
certification for packaging materials
and packages produced according to
acceptable standards; and provision of
testing services for packages and
packaging materials.
TBS Corporate Plan for the period
2007/08-2009/10 stipulates that TBS will
ensure that the PTC is equipped and
becomes operational by the end of
2007/08. The arrival of the equipment
for the consumer packaging section of
the centre is part of the realization of
the plan. More equipment for the PTC,
worth USD 365,000, will also be
delivered to TBS in September 2007 as
part of the implementation of the Danida
funded project - Business Sector
Programme Support (Phase II).
TBS would like to extend its gratitude
to SECO, UNIDO and Danida together with
the Government of Tanzania for their
hand in improving its capacity to
undertake standardization, metrology,
quality assurance and conformity
assessment activities
World
Metrology Day
May 20th each year is World
Metrology Day. It is a special day to
commemorate the signing of the Metre
Convention, which took place in Paris,
France, May 20th 1875.
The Metre Convention advocates
for adherence to the International
System of Units (SI units).
Tanzania is already determined to
use SI units and the Tanzania Bureau of
Standards’ Metrology Laboratory is the
Custodian of National Measurement
Standards. The
establishment of the Custodian of
National Measurement Standards aims at
ensuring accuracy and traceability of
all measurements in the country.
That is to say, when one measures
the length of a piece of cloth in
Tanzania and finds it to be one metre,
the cloth should also measure one metre
when measured in another laboratory in
the UK or France.
In this sense, a 20oC
temperature measured in Tanzania should
be the same when measured in UK or any
other country; and one kilogram should
be the same throughout the world.
We can only ensure that our
measurements are compatible with
measurements in other countries, if we
calibrate our measuring implements at
TBS Metrology Laboratory.
Suppose you go to a hospital to check
your body temperature and you are
wrongly told that it is at 42oC.
This means the doctor will give you
wrong prescriptions.
You check the pressure and you
are given wrong readings.
You measure your weight and you
get wrong readings.
You measure carbon monoxide
emission from a car and you get wrong
readings. In
totality, wrong measurements have very
negative effects. That is why we are
compelled to sensitize the public in
general and the industrialists in
particular, on the importance of
ensuring use of right measurements.
The government’s decision to
establish the TBS Metrology Laboratory
as the Custodian of National Measurement
Standards is part of its efforts to
ensure that Tanzanians use appropriate
measurements. The
Metrology Laboratory is already
accredited to ISO 17025, General
requirements for the competence of
testing and calibration laboratories,
since December 15, 2006. This is the
first laboratory in Tanzania to reach
such a step. This means the laboratory
is capable to issue test reports which
are recognized throughout the world.
I call upon the general public to
utilize the services of this laboratory.
Even when you go to hospital you can
ask, "Is this
thermometer/pressure gauge calibrated by
TBS?"
Ekelege
Acting TBS Director
Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS)
Management team has appointed Mr.
Charles Ekelege to be the Acting
Director of the Bureau.
The appointment follows the
retirement of Mr. Daimon Mwakyembe on
2007-01-19 after serving the
organization for more than 25 years.
Introducing Mr. Ekelege to the
workers on 2007-01-22, the retired
Director Mr. Mwakyembe urged workers to
cooperate with him for the development
of TBS and the country as a whole in
ensuring safety and quality of products.
Before the appointment Mr.
Ekelege was heading the Engineering
Standards Department and he will hold
the post until the new Director is
appointed.
Food
safety standard coming
A
new standard on food safety management
will be
introduced soon, it has been learnt.
The standard
titled Food Safety Management 22000
to be introduced in the course of the
next financial
year, will help hotel owners and
Tanzania food
growers to place into the market
products that are
acceptable by international
standards.
This was revealed by the TBS Director,
Mr. Daimon
Mwakyembe during a press conference held
in Arusha,
recently. "We
are in a globalized world and when
tourists come
here they never carry food from their
homelands. That means people need
to offer services
that are acceptable
internationally,"
he said.
New
packaging technology centre coming
The
Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS)
Packaging
Technology Centre will soon be opened to
improve
packaging of local products.
TBS Director Mr. Daimon Mwakyembe
told the
Parliamentary Standing Committee on
Investment and
Trade recently that initial assessment
has shown that
Tanzanian products fail to break through
the
international market due to, among other
things, poor
packaging. He
told the committee which made a tour of
the Bureau
that the centre will be testing the
quality of all
packages for different local products to
ensure that
they meet international standards.
The centre which will also offer
training to
individuals and companies in the
packaging industry
so that they can offer services
that meet international
standards, has been jointly
funded by the
Government and the Danish International
Development Agency (DANIDA) with
the former
providing TZS 150 million and the latter
TZS 300
million
TBS
counsels manufacturers
Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) has
asked local
manufacturers to comply with
environmental and
international standards to
guarantee their survival in
the highly competitive global
commercial scenario.
TBS Director Mr. Daimon Mwakyembe
told
attendants of a seminar for human
resources
managers recently that failure to comply
with the
environmental management system
stipulated in the
International Organization for
Standardization’s ISO
14001 standards would render them
uncompetitive.
He also said that tourists and
immigrants might also
reject locally manufactured
products unless the
manufacturers and developers
complied with
standards that were globally recognized.
Mr. Mwakyembe was officiating the
fifth training
session on implementation of the
Environmental
Management System, which was held in
Arusha
recently.
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