A Workshop to Improve Capacity of Metrology Lab in Belize

Today small, medium enterprises as well as large scale industry stakeholders converged at the Biltmore Plaza in Belize City for a metrology workshop, hosted by the Belize Bureau of Standards. With the assistance of the Mexican Metrology Institute, the Bureau of Standards intends to build the capacity of its staff and provide the expertise in setting measurement standards to ensuring equity in the marketplace and for calibration services throughout the country.  Currently, large scale industry stakeholders are sending equipment outside of the country for calibration. But now that the bureau has acquired funding and technical support, services in different parameters such as mass, temperature and dimension will be available in country. News Five spoke today with Mexican expert Salvador Echeverria and the Director at the Bureau of Standards Jose Trejo about the one-year-project.

Jose Trejo

Jose Trejo, Director, Belize Bureau of Standards

“We are trying to develop the competencies. Now the competencies will have to develop in tandem with the market needs and so this workshop really is to try and tease out some of the metrological needs of the private sector whether it’s in temperature, pressure, length so that then the bureau could then provide that kind of service and calibration to the private sector. This project is through the Mexican International Agency for International Development and Cooperation. It is the second project that we are getting under the scientific and technical cooperation and we are hoping that this will push us to look to get more projects. So they are here to do stocktaking of industry, to do the workshop and then the last day will be to draft out the implementation plan.”

Salvador Echeverria

Salvador Echeverria, Representative, National Centre of Metrology, Mexico

“We are very happy that finally after twelve years of struggle and fight, you have your own institute of metrology. That is a very important asset for the country for many things. Mainly three…for all that is consumer protection, environment and health; that’s one thing. The other of course is commerce; equity in commerce and so on. And the other is industry competitiveness—quality, productivity and so on.”

Jose Trejo

“The idea is to roll out the whole implementation up until 2024-2025. So then what they will do is to do monitoring and evaluation of Belize’s ability to meet the expectations and to roll out the plan.”