By Mariatou Ngum
The Minister of Trade, Industry, Regional Integration and Employment (MOTIE), Hon. Baboucarr Ousmaila Joof last week moved a motion for the second reading of The Gambia Legal Metrology Bill, 2024.
The main objective of the Bill is to ensure that consumers enjoy value for money in trade by strengthening national weight and measuring system. Too often consumers purchase goods (example a bag of rice, sugar and cement) that are less than the weight assigned to these goods.
Presenting the motion to the lawmakers, Minister Joof emphasised that the drafting of the new Bill is conversant with the need to modernise the legal metrology legislation in order to reflect the advancement in science and technology in the area of measuring devices and to address challenges posed by these instruments. He informed the Assembly that the present Weights and Measures Act of 1977 and the Standards of the Weights and Measures Rules is deficient in some of its sections, and not serving its due purpose.
Justification for the Bill
Trade Minister Joof said the Bill will strengthen the institutional capacity for effective enforcement of legal metrology in The Gambia. “Technological change facilitated the development of a wide range of new measuring instruments and processes and a massive expansion in the scope of metrology,” he said.
The current Weights and Measures Act, according to Honorable Joof, has gaps; in the sense that, apart from trade, it does not cover the regulation of measurement instrument used in law enforcement, health and safety, and environment. “The Bill will therefore help address these gaps to complement traceability and ensure confidence in the integrity of the national measurement system,” he added.
Merging Weights and Measures Bureau with The Gambia Standards Bureau
The Trade minister went on to inform that the drafting of the Bill has been very consultative and participatory, resulting to a national consensus to merge the Weights and Measures Bureau with The Gambia Standards Bureau (TGSB). Once the Bill is passed into law, he noted, legal metrology issues will be administered by The Gambia Standards Bureau under its Department of Legal Metrology.
The amalgamation of Weights and Measures Bureau with TGSB, Joof went on, will enable the Legal Metrology Department to leverage on the strength of the TGSB, particularly on the verification of its measurement standards and use of technical staff to support its work.
