Mauritius Accreditation Service

The Mauritius Accreditation Service (MAURITAS) has been established as a department within the Ministry responsible for the subject of Industry, following the adoption of the MAURITAS Act by the National Assembly in December 1998. The aim of MAURITAS is to provide accreditation services to testing/calibration laboratories; inspection bodies; and certification bodies operating certification of products, personnel and management systems. Laboratories, inspection bodies and certification bodies are also termed conformity assessment bodies (CABs) since their main function is to determine conformity to standards and specifications.

Historical Background

MAURITAS forms part of the National Quality Infrastructure and is responsible for ensuring that accredited bodies are competent to carry out work they undertake. The National Quality Infrastructure provides a global picture of the important roles to be played by Standards, Metrology and Accreditation.

The Mauritian economy is now fully embarked in securing its transition from a system based on trade preferences to one based on Global competition. All the agencies that form part of the conformity assessment infrastructure (CAI) will assist in facilitating exchanges with our trading partners through the removal of Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). These include amongst others the national accreditation body. If Mauritian enterprises are to trade in global markets, they will need amongst others to demonstrate conformity of potential export products with international standards.
Mauritius needs to have a full-fledged conformity assessment infrastructure (CAI) in order to be able to demonstrate conformity and also to ensure that this demonstration if recognized regionally and internationally by our trading partners.

Accreditation is defined as the procedure by which an authoritative body gives formal recognition that a body or person is competent to carry out specific tasks. The key words from the above definition in the process of accreditation are “authoritative”, formal recognition” and “competent”.

MAURITAS is the sole national authority in Mauritius for granting accreditation to conformity assessment bodies involved in calibration, testing, inspection and certification. Such bodies may be engaged in conformity assessment for the benefit of Government, business and consumers at large either in the voluntary or regulatory sector. MAURITAS fulfils this function by assessing conformity assessment bodies (CABs) to determine whether they are technically competent.
Thus, through accreditation MAURITAS builds and maintains confidence for the benefit of all interested parties.

At the international level, the purpose of Accreditation is to remove technical barriers to trade by ensuring that the results of conformity assessment are accepted and recognized among trading partners. Accreditation also improves the quality and reliability of services provided to local users of conformity assessment bodies and is thus important at the national level for the protection of the health and safety of the population and for the protection of the environment.

In order to be able to grant accreditation to conformity assessment bodies MAURITAS must itself comply with the international standard ISO/IEC 17011.

The conformity assessment bodies for their part must also comply with international standards ISO/IEC 17025 (laboratory) and ISO/IEC 17021-1 (certification body) in order to get accredited.

By working with international standards, MAURITAS ensures that the conformity assessment bodies are assessed against criteria that is used world-wide.