ISLAMABAD: A parliamentary committee on Wednesday unanimously approved the National Metrological Institute Bill, 2022, which had been pending for the last 25 years.

Reviewing the content of the bill, the Senate Standing Committee on Science and Technology, which met to deliberate on the document, pointed out certain typographical errors. Other than that there was consensus that the bill was overdue.

The committee members observed that it was unfortunate that the bill had been pending for over a quarter century.

The meeting learnt that the National Physical and Standards Laboratory (NPSL), located in Islamabad, was the only National Metrology Institute of Pakistan functioning in a professional manner and rendering calibration and testing services.

The NPSL, which was established in 1974 under a development project of the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR), started functioning practically at its present premises in Islamabad in 1983, as a unit of the PCSIR.

Since its establishment, the NPSL has been operating as the apex body in the field of metrology and was the sole custodian of the National Standards of Measurement in the country.

The members were informed that the NPSL dealt with the establishment of infrastructure of metrology to implement and operate a unified and coherent national measurement system as per international requirements and practices for quality assurance and management system and to support legal metrology in Pakistan.

The organisation also catered to a limited number of fields of metrology such as the science of measurements, which included mass, length, time and frequency, electrical, thermal and pressure measurements.

The meeting was also told that currently the organisation had approximately 500 clients and had introduced the bill to provide it legal cover which was a prerequisite of the international trading partners of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The members were informed that the then prime minister had approved the proposal for the placement of NPSL under the Ministry of Science and Technology, as an autonomous body in 1997, and since then was awaiting realisation.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2022