Border staff boost skills in biosecurity |08 June 2012

The manual is intended to act as a point of reference for the day-to-day operations of inspectors and other border personnel and provide guidelines to enable the surveillance and monitoring of biosecurity risks at the ports of entries. 

It is designed to assist Inspectors assess a range of potential biosecurity risk pathways and evaluate biosecurity risk of materials that might enter the country through these pathways.
Its objective is threefold:

• to ensure appropriate actions and procedures are taken to facilitate the commercial trade in plants, animals and associated products

• to reduce the risk of entry of pests, diseases and IAS on the traded products and other items into the Republic of Seychelles, and

• to restrict the spread of pests, diseases and IAS within the Republic of Seychelles.

The development of the manual and the training on its application are both UNDP supported activities with funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) undertaken under the Biosecurity project being managed by the GOS-UNDP-GEF Programme Coordination Unit (PCU).

The operations manual and training are complementary activities to the recent introduction of the new passenger disembarkation card and the scanners at the international airport.

The training was conducted by the two international consultants who developed the manual and was undertaken through three separate workshops over a five-day period including a training-of- trainer session for the most experienced officers.

The chief executive of the Seychelles Agricultural Agency Marc Naiken and the Revenue Commissioner Jennifer Morel both attended the end of the training sessions to hand over certificates of attendance to the delegates.