Most of the time when the Bureau of Standards makes the news, it's because that Government Department, which is responsible for consumer protection, is being criticized for not being able to enforce the laws against abusive merchants, usually due to lack of will, resources or personnel.
Well tonight, the Bureau is making the evening news because they've become the first fully Government Department to receive international accreditation under the ISO 9001 certification. This means that the Bureau is carries stamp of approval in improved regularity frameworks, good governance, fair markets, all geared towards an increase in public confidence.
That ISO certification came at the right time when the Bureau of Standards was celebrating World Accreditation Day with the rest of the world under the theme: Accreditation: A Global tool to Support Public. Today, we stopped by the Ask the Director and his Minister about the milestone:
Jose Trejo - Belize Bureau of Standards
"Acreditation is basically a tool for public policy, a tool to ensure that facilities particularly the public facilities that are doing testing, inspecting, calibrating, certifying, that they have the competency, the technical competency and that they are operating at international standards. So that is important in terms of, because of government has a responsibility to put in policies to ensure that in terms of safety."
Hon. Tracy Taegar, Minister of State/Trade, Investment
"For some time now the government of Belize in conjunction with its Bureau of Standards have been working at improving Belize's national quality infrastructure in terms of our standards not only for products and goods but for also services. The Bureau is the agency that is tasked with responsibility to implement a quality infrastructure for the country and therefore it becoming certified in terms of quality management systems, gives it the proper framework in which the develop standards across sectors."
Jose Trejo - Belize Bureau of Standards
"As it relates to our certification today the Bureau of Standards is now certified to the ISO 9001 2008 quality management system standard. What this means, now the Bureau actually, based on that standard confirms to all those requirements that are laid out in this standard. Does it mean that we are a perfect institution that we correct everything? No. What it means is that the standard allows us to be able to operate to find out where there is little deficiencies and weaknesses and use the standard as a guide to correct those little deficiencies and so on. So that the organization is continuously evolving and improving to provide the highest level of services."
The Director tells us that getting the ISO 9001 certification is only the half the job, the other is keeping it under the watchful presence of international auditors who will re-assess their department in a few months from now to ensure that they still meet the standard.
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