IRCA (UK) approved training on ISO 22000

IRCA (International Register for Certificated Auditors) UK, approved training on ISO 22000 (Food safety management system requirements) which incorporates HACCP was conducted in Sri Lanka by Quality International Technical Service (Pvt) Ltd. (QITS) recently.

QITS is an affiliate of IQCS (Singapore), who is the largest training provider for IRCA approved programs in South-East Asia.

As an affiliate of IQCS, QITS is authorised to conduct the full range of IRCA programs in Sri Lanka. These include ISO 9001:2000 (Quality Management), ISO 14001:2004 (Environment Management, ISO 22000: 2005 (Food safety management) and OHSAS 18001 (Occupational health and safety). Action is initiated for training on ISO 17799 (Information security management systems) and Social accountability.

IRCA is a branch of the Institute of Quality Assurance (IQA), UK and is a world recognised training accreditation and auditor certification management system including ISO standards. Those who successfully qualify at the examination at the end of training will be eligible to register with IRCA as auditors, which is the highest level of professional status for auditing.

QITS had so far trained over 30 HACCP auditors in addition to QMS as well as OHSAS auditors and many of them are involved with consultancy and auditing with SLAQ to acquire the auditing experience before they register with IRCA as fully competent auditors and consultants.

The program was witnessed by Dennis Darker (Reviewing Officer) of IRCA and Tracy Chooi Lean Yin (International Scheme Director) of IQCS. The training programs offered by QITS in Sri Lanka are regularly monitored by IRCA to ensure effectiveness of training. In this process all new approaches are incorporated to make these programs current.

There were participants from many industry sectors with the largest group from the hotel trade. QITS will be focusing on exports specially tea and coconut as well as the hotel trade to assist them to strengthen the food safety management programs and look for accredited certification.