Bangladesh Accreditation Board for the first time after its inception six years ago is going to provide accreditation to four laboratories in a bid to raise their standards of the conformity assessment.
‘The BAB will provide accreditation to four laboratories before the World Accreditation Day on June 9 and another six laboratories will get certificates by this year,’ BAB director general Abu Abdullah told in a views exchange meeting with media in a city hotel on Tuesday.
He, however, did not disclose the names of the laboratories.
‘The laboratories to be certified will test and accredit standards of products and services to ensure no-question acceptance of Bangladeshi products and services in international, regional and domestic markets,’ he said.
The chief aim of giving the accreditation is to increase export competitiveness of Bangladesh by ensuring quality of exportable goods and services, he said.
He said the BAB had already conducted four mock assessments at different laboratories of Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and SGS Bangladesh Limited to be sure about their standards of conformity assessment.
The BAB, an autonomous agency established in 2006, is authorised to provide accreditation to the various types of laboratories, certification bodies, inspection bodies and training institutions which test and certify standards of products and services in accordance with international standardisation bodies like International Organisation for Standardisation.
Although the BAB is established six years ago, the authorities did not provide any accreditation till now mainly due to shortage of manpower and other technical facilities.
BAB chief said the board was monitoring another 30 laboratories for giving accreditation. There are around 200 laboratories working in the country.
‘We will conduct inspection before and after giving accreditation to assess whether the bodies are complying and maintaining required standards,’ he said.
Currently the BAB is recognised by International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation, Asia Pacific Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation and Pacific Accreditation Cooperation.
‘We have applied for the membership of International Accreditation Forum and hopefully we will obtain the membership by the middle of the next year,’ BAB chief said.
Once the BAB gets the membership of IAF, the accreditation provided by the BAB would be accepted worldwide. Currently Bangladeshi exporters and businessmen are taking accreditation from other countries. The process is time consuming and costly.
‘Moreover, Bangladeshi products without accreditation face some technical barrier in exports like multiple testing. IAF’s recognition will remove such barriers,’ he added.