Standards, trade, health on agenda of CROSQ Council of Directors

International and regional organisations are scheduled to be in Barbados from April 4-6, 2018, for the 32nd meeting of the Council of Directors of the CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards & Quality (CROSQ).

The Secretary General of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), Mr. Sergio Mujica, as well as representatives of United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO) will be among a number of international experts in standardisation, trade and trade facilitation and international health matters, who will be addressing the directors of the CARICOM bureaux of standards during the three-day meeting to be held at the Accra Beach Resort.

The meeting, being jointly hosted by the Barbados National Standards Institute (BNSI), opens at 9 a.m. on April 4, and will discuss how each of these areas fit into the quality agenda of the region during the first two days. The third day is a closed meeting exclusive to the directors to look at the direction and development of quality infrastructure for the year ahead.

The opening ceremony is also set to be addressed by the European Union’s First Secretary, Mr. Luca Pierantoni; Barbados’ Minister of Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Development, Mr. Donville Inniss; and the Caribbean Development Bank’s Coordinator of Regional Cooperation and Integration, Ms. Andrea Power.

CEO of CROSQ, Mr. Deryck Omar, stated that it was also an honour for the organisation to be hosting so many international and regional leaders, including those from the CARICOM Secretariat, the Caribbean Agricultural Health and Food Safety Agency (CAHFSA), and Caribbean Export, who could contribute to the ongoing discussion in CARICOM of how quality services are developed and what the region should be doing to improve life, health and safety here with quality as the stepping stone.

“This is the first time one of our Council Meetings will see this kind of engagement of such a wide range of professionals and leaders from so many areas that can add value to the work done by our bureaux of standards. In this increasingly expanding global environment, if we do not take the challenge of how we facilitate trade seriously; if we don’t take care in how we develop the services and infrastructure that help our products export and improve the products and services we offer as a region, then we will be left totally out of the loop.

“That essentially is what this meeting is about – bringing some of the minds together to discuss what is happening internationally and regionally and how they twin and mesh and finding out where the divergence and gaps are, so we can respond with convergence opportunities as a CARICOM Region. We can only do better if we have the information of what is out there,” said the CEO.

The CROSQ CEO noted: “It must also be said that after this meeting this week, in a few weeks CROSQ will officially be introducing the Regional Quality Policy to the region as a whole which deals with how we develop our quality infrastructure services, and this will include the roles that our public and private sectors, as well as civil society have to play in advancing our standards; our measurement capabilities and facilities; our accreditation and certification for services and products; and then how we spread the awareness of what is available to every corner of our region.”

This 32nd meeting will also be the first for the new Chair of CROSQ, Dr. Renae Ferguson-Bufford of the Bahamas Bureau of Standards and Quality (BBSQ) who was appointed during last year’s meeting in St. Kitts and Nevis.