what we do

Inspections

The Agency monitors and controls the quality and safety of products subjected to Compulsory Standards on the market through inspections and related activities under the Import Quality Monitoring and Domestic Quality Monitoring Departments in line with World Trade Organization Technical Barriers to Trade (WTO TBT) Agreement guidelines and other international and regional best practices.

Inspections are done at the factory and include assessment of the production infrastructure and processes, quality assurance systems and product sampling and testing. This is aimed at reducing the risk to consumers associated with the intake or use of substandard and unsafe products. These inspections are conducted on site in factories to ensure pre-market compliance to compulsory standards and other administrative requirements.

Market Surveillance

A market surveillance is a post market activity aimed at ensuring continued compliance to compulsory standards once the products have left the border or the local factory and are placed on the market. This is aimed at protecting the public from any unsafe products whose integrity may be compromised by poor transportation or storage conditions, inadequate shelf life monitoring, or indeed adulteration with undesired materials.

In order to demonstrate the credibility of inspection results and to verify the competence of the inspection system the Agency is working towards accreditation to the international standard ISO 17020: Conformity Assessment — Requirements for the operation of various types of bodies performing inspection. This will further enhance compliance with compulsory standards and lead to the production of safe and good quality products.

This will further promote fair trade, protect national and international markets and assists industry to become globally competitive by ensuring that all regulated products comply with regulations. This is to the extent that all local producers comply with the same standards regardless of size or market share. This makes products which are manufactured be safe and of an acceptable quality.