General Information on Compulsory Standards
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Compulsory Standards Unit (CSU) The Mission of BOBS is to establish National standards, to promote and facilitate their implementation. There are two kinds of standards, namely the Voluntary and Compulsory standards (Technical regulations). These standards differ primarily in their implementation processes. Whereas Stakeholders have a choice in implementing the former, they do not have the same liberty with the latter. That means Compulsory standards are enforceable by Law whereas Voluntary standards are not and this enforcement of compulsory standards is provided for in the Standards Act Section 13, which states that any one violating a compulsory standard is committing an offense. Section 14 of the same Act provides for Fines and Penalties of such offenses and it states that, anyone found guilty of violating a compulsory standard is liable for imprisonment of 3 years and a fine of P3000.00. It should be noted that Botswana is a member of World Trade Organization (WTO), so when BOBS decides to establish a Compulsory standards it takes into account the demands of WTO Technical Barriers to Trade (WTO-TBT) Regulations and Code of good Practice. These Regulations among others provides the Criteria for establishing and implementing Compulsory and also cautions against making them unnecessarily too stringent for fear of the resultant Non-compliance and the implications of such as well as creating Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). Contacts
Mr Alfred Kgotlaetsile
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