By Mabinty M. Kamara
The Executive Director of the Sierra Leone Standards Bureau (SLSB) has raised concern over the institution’s incapacity to effectively carry out its mandate of ensuring a safe society through a quality inspection regime.
Prof. Thomas B. R Yormah, who was speaking at the government’s weekly press briefing at the Ministry of Information and Communication on Thursday, said the Bureau lacked the necessary resources to enable it perform its functions.
“The Sierra Leone Standards Bureau is currently under-resourced to the extent that we lack the resources to mount a robust and effective border quality inspection and market surveillance,” he said.
Prof. Yormah was speaking in response to publications on social and mainstream media about the existence of a substandard rice product in the country. According to the reports, a company called Gtext brought the alleged substandard rice product and was certified by the Bureau.
But Prof. Yormah dismissed the allegations which also entailed that staff of the Bureau collected money from the company. T
“The allegation that our inspection officers collected money from Gitex is not true,” he said.
Prof. Yormah was at the head of a team from the Bureau that attended the press conference, which offered them an opportunity to highlight the limitations of the institution, one of which is the lack of free hand to execute its functions. He noted that one of the key mandates of the Bureau is the protection of human health, the economy and the environment from the negative impacts of substandard products.
“Ideally, we should be able to carry out our quality inspection at all landing boarders, but currently we are present at only two boarder entry points, to wit, the Queen Elizabeth the II Quay and at Gbalamuya on the Guinea /Sierra Leone boarder point,” he said.
“This means that substandard goods can come into the country via all the other entry points, including Lungi International Airport, Jendema and the host of unofficial entry points on our porous borders,” he said.
Yormah also lamented that the Bureau is not given the required space at the Queen Elizabeth the 11 Quay to operate, noting that as a consequence, at least 60% to 70% of the containers that come into the country leave the port premises without undergoing quality inspection.
Tamba Kamanda, Product Certification Manager of the Bureau, explained that it is very difficult to determine the quality of rice by marely looking at it. He noted that even the sample collection itself is scientific.
Kamanda said sometimes the goods expire in the stores as they do not allow in to the country any good that have less than six months before expiry.
Mohamed Osman Bah, Manager, Inspection at Queen Elizabeth II Quay, in his presentation emphasized on the lack of capacity of the institution. He said many of the substandard products in the market enter into the country at night.
“We lack the capacity to effectively monitor because you need logistics to go around chasing them,” he said.
According to Bah, many of the importers fail to produce relevant documents to help the Bureau do its inspection effectively. He said for food and food products, the importers are required to produce quality certificate and landing and manifest conformity certificate, as well as certificate of analysis, on the basis of which information the goods are tested. Bah added that because the importers often fail to produce these documents, the Bureau always have to test it based on its own parameters.
He said sometimes the container owners would call top ranking officials to get their containers released without proper inspection.
“That is how most containers go out without quality certificate. We need to conduct thorough tests,” he stressed.
© 2019 Politico Online
