Standardization is important in protecting public health and ensuring public safety of the people of a nation. Standards development has to be a market driven activity and it has to be ensured that standards developed are implemented by the concerned stakeholders so as to bring benefits to all stakeholders. This has required for the development of national standards on water quality, waste water quality and fire hydrant to be used as reference to perform regulatory functions effectively.
In this view, PURA collaborated with The Gambia Standards Bureau to develop the three standards mentioned above. The said standards would promote and mitigate public health and safety issues in relation to drinking water, waste water and fire incidences if implemented by the authorities.
These draft standards are at public commenting stage. Public commenting is one of the key stages in standards development procedures. At this stage the Bureau solicits comments from interested parties, stakeholders and individuals that were not part of the technical committee. All received comments will later be reviewed by the main TC for its relevance.
The main objective of the public commenting is to make the standards all-inclusive by seeking for the sounding opinions of all stakeholders and interested parties that the standard affect once it is adopted as a national standard.