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| Sunday, 16 March 2003 |
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Business |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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New standards for weights and measures Plans are under way to convert the Department of Measurement Units, Standards and Services to an Authority to ensure correct weights and measures for all products and services, increase flexibility and become a self-financing agency. A paper has been submitted by the Ministry of Commerce and Consumer Affairs to the Cabinet to repeal the Measurement Units, Standards and Services Act No 35 of 1995, to enact laws to establish the National Metrology Authority and Ministry-approved private sector laboratories to undertake some of the identified functions until the changes are effected, said authoritative sources. The objectives of this exercise are to increase flexibility, revenue and efficiency, reduce costs and more importantly, to ensure that the public and private sector network gives the correct weights and measures for all products and services used by consumers. The new authority will delegate some of these functions to accredited private sector laboratories as a measure of reducing its costs. The decision to convert the Department to an Authority was taken Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Ravi Karunanayake after a team of professionals undertook a study of the Department's activities which revealed that its performance was not satisfactory and that malpractices were rampant. Although the Act empowers the Department to undertake several activities relating to metrology, it has been able to undertake only two basic activities - the verification of traders' weights, measures and weighing and measuring instruments (Section 22.5) and the registration of persons who manufacture, sell and repair weights and measures (Section 21.1). The Department has not initiated the pattern approval of weights, measures and weighing and measuring instruments used in trade and industry, periodic verification or certification of measures or instruments used in the protection of health and safety, pollution control, environmental protection and control of pre-packs. It is said that although the Department is expected to attend to the verification of units in trade and industry, the number of units so verified has remained stagnant over the last 10 years. The number of offenses detected within the last 10 years show a slight increase, but is not commensurate with the increase in wholesale and trading activities witnessed during the period. The Department is the apex organisation for the science of measurements and is responsible for the national measurement system, encompassing regulatory activities and transactions based on measurements. It presently conducts three functions - fundamental metrology, industrial metrology and legal metrology. The National Measurement Laboratory carries out primary measurement standards based on accepted international standards. |
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