Ameen Bin Nabil Mulla, Governor of the Saudi Commission for Specifications and Standards (SCSS), has said that a council tasked with protecting consumers from imported products violating the Kingdom's specifications and standards is being formed with representatives from several government bodies. The council will be made up of representatives from the ministries of Trade and Industry, Health, Municipal and Rural Affairs, and Agriculture, as well as Customs, the Food and Drug Authority and the Saudi Commission for Specifications and Standards, and members are expected to meet within three months to define each body's role. Mulla said the SCSS had already carried out a significant part of its plan manifested in its obtaining the International Organization for Standardization ISO certificate, the first government body in the Kingdom to acquire it. The SCSS has signed recognition agreements with China, North Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa, Argentina, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, the Philippines, Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia, and is now in negotiation with other countries over agreements on “compatible quality” which make it mandatory for all their exports to the Kingdom to conform to its specifications and standards. The SCSS has also established the “Saudi Committee for Accreditation” which has been tasked with approving quality control laboratories, inspection bodies and authorities issuing certificates. Twenty-nine laboratories have so far been approved. The Ministry of Commerce and Industry has selected five of the 29 laboratories to inspect and clear imported products. The SCSS applies International Specification 17025 to select its own quality control laboratories. Mulla said the laboratories followed the latest international specifications and standards and analyzed samples requested by monitoring and surveillance authorities in the country. “The accreditation of SCSS laboratories qualifies them for international standardizations and specifications organizations that grant global recognition,” he said. Mulla was speaking on Arab Standardization Day, which is observed by all Arab countries on March 25 to mark the founding of the Arab Organization for Industrial Development and Investment in 1965.
