Papua New Guinea needs a proper standard pathway for companies. This is because businesses who trade internationally get blacklisted quite often because of safety and health breaches, according to Manufacturer’s council chief executive officer Chey Scovell, as not everyone understands standards.
The problem, he said, that except for the major manufacturers, no one needs a global safety and food system because this comes off as stringent for smaller businesses.
“To have accreditation you need to be able to go to a honey producer in the highlands for instance and go and talk to anybody in that factory and ask them about hygiene processes and stores and they have to answer the question,” he said. “If they don’t answer the question how do you know it goes clean from here to there.”
Mr Scovell said that the challenge is still with low literacy levels which really don’t have any standards at hand.
“Each thing is different, movement of people, services and goods and losing market access,” he said, “We don’t lose market access if we don’t have a standard for trade we can potentially lose market access if we don’t have recognised systems for certification particular around biosecurity products.”
