Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS)

The Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) plans to spend 9.9 billion Tanzanian shillings, in this financial year (2022/2023), on putting up one mega modern laboratory in each of the two cities of Dodoma and Mwanza.

The buildings, to be named Viwango House, are aimed at bringing services closer to clients as well as increasing efficiency in service delivery.

The revelation was made on last Monday in Dodoma by TBS Director General, Dr. Athuman Ngenya while talking to journalist about the organizations’s key priorities and strategies for 2022/23 fiscal year.

According to him, in the 2022/23 financial year, TBS had outlined its priorities by considering the Bureau’s strategic plan (2021/2022-2025/2026), the National Five Year Development Plan (FYDPIII) as well as sectarian policies (entrepreneurs, business and industries).

Also, Dr. Ngenya said, his institution has allocated 27bn/- that would be spent in refurbishing seven zone offices – Arusha, Mwanza, Mtwara, Dar es salaam, Dodoma, Kigoma and Mbeya, as well as increasing the work force and working equipmentin order to expedite service delivery as well as strengthening frequent inspections in order to remove substandards products in the market.

Furthermore, he noted, TBS has allocated 1.6bn/- that would be spent in preparing 630 national standards in different sectors in order to facilitate business that would provide assurance to producers to access markets inside and outside the country as well as ensuring that there is quality assurance to the final consumers.

In this financial year, TBS has also allocated 261m/- for strengthening registration of products and storage areas of food and cosmetics in ensuring that consumers are not using substandard products.

In yet another move, Dr. Ngenya said TBS has allocated 581m/- for improving accreditation of all the working systems, the work that has so far been tasked to TBS.The boss said the new systems would help consumers to have access to the quality services.

In other priorities, he said the government had allocated 800m/- that will be spent in making assessment and verification of the quality of the various laboratory test and other tests for industries and those from hospitals.

“We have also allocated 1.18bn/- for Pre Shipment Verification of Conformity (PVoC) as well as destination inspection in efforts to ensure that the country does not fall into a trap of banned products in other countries,” he noted.

PVoC is conformity assessment procedure used to verify that products to be imported in Tanzania are in conformity with applicable national standards before shipment. It is conformity assessment and verification procedure to specific goods at exporting countries.

As per the legislation, before shipping to Tanzania all consignments subject to PVoC must obtain the mandatory custom clearance documents and certificate of conformity (CoC) without which the commodities arriving at Tanzania ports will be rejected and fined.

In addition, Dr. Ngenya has said that the organization is joining the Government to encourage the Population and Housing Census to be held on August 23, 2022.

For his part, the Chief Government Spokesman and Director General of the Department of Information, Gerson Msigwa, has said that the responsibility of the government through the Tanzania Bureau of Standards is to ensure that all products in the country are safe for usage.