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The South African National Accreditation System (SANAS) will host a breakfast session as part of the celebrations for World Accreditation Day (WAD). The breakfast session will be attended by stakeholders from business, government and regulators. The session will take place on Thursday, 9 June 2016 at Forever Resort hotel in Centurion from 8:30.

WAD is a global initiative, jointly established by the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) and International Accreditation Forum (IAF), to raise awareness of the importance of accreditation.

The Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Rob Davies says SANAS accreditation is a key element of the South African technical infrastructure framework and has a major role to play in the country’s economy.

“SANAS facilitates South Africa’s industrialisation efforts through the accreditation of a pool of accredited conformity assessment bodies to avoid expensive re-testing, re-certification or re-inspection in the manufacturing sector and facilitate the acceptance of conformity assessment results. This will ensure measurement accuracy, verify compliance with specifications, grant access to international markets and give the sector a competitive edge,” he adds.

Davies also says SANAS supports IPAP sectors to comply with regulators’ health, safety and environment requirements such as workplace safety, occupational hygiene regulations and energy efficiency.

This year’s WAD theme which is Accreditation: A Global Tool to support Public Policy, focuses on how accreditation can be a tool to support public policy for all areas in the various public sectors, national and local government, regulators.

According to the CEO of SANAS Mr Ron Josias, during tough economic conditions it is imperative that the national accredited conformity assessment body network is on par with international requirements in order for international trading and exchange of services to continue with ease.

“This requires continuously updating new standards and acquiring the capability to conform to new regulations and technical requirements as advances are made in various fields. In the business environment, all market-based transactions centre around the assurance that a product or service will meet the agreed requirements,” he adds.

Key representatives from the Department of Labour, National Metrology Institute of South Africa and the Department of Trade and Industry’s (the dti) International Trade and Economic Development Division will share their experiences of using SANAS accreditation in support of the implementation of public policy.

To help explain the use of accredited conformity assessment, the Public Sector Assurance website www.publicsectorassurance.org has been established to showcase different global examples where accreditation has been used to support public policy efforts. 

As in previous years, SANAS will be joined by representatives from various government departments, Regulators and other industry bodies at this breakfast session.

Issued by GCIS on behalf of the Department of Trade and Industry and SANAS