22 teachers and future assessors for Bahrain have been successfully certified.
The two European training institutes joined forces to help Bahrain establish a certification scheme, the National Certification Program of Bahrain Environmental Refrigerant Management, assessing the teachers who will now be the assessors for the region.
The scheme is intended to follow the example of European Union which, since 2006, has had in place a legislative framework for increasing competence in the servicing sector.
Centro Studi Galileo and Business Edge have designed a national certification programme to ensure that only qualified technicians are handling and servicing equipment and fluids and that these technicians are informed and updated regarding applicable national ozone-depleting substances regulation.
The programme will certify technicians who have been trained and have passed a preliminary test under the scheme, as well as other technicians who can pass a written and practical test that is designed for that purpose.
22 teachers and assessors of multiple nationalities undertook a five-day Train the Trainers and Assessors workshop, organised by Centro Studi Galileo.
Participants came from different regions, including Arabic countries, India, Pakistan and the Philippines. In a part of the world where a foreign workforce is predominant, future theoretical tests will be in different languages to reflect this diversity, and could also be undertaken verbally.
The candidates successfully passed their theoretical test to a high standard. On this occasion, it followed the Italian certification scheme and was applied in a way to follow the proposed constituted Bahraini law on refrigerant management, which will be known as 'Bahrain Environmental Refrigerant Management License (ERML)'.
The practical test was also well-performed, even if a few 'best practices' required some improvement, such as tighter and stricter control of the leakages and tightness of the system.
Additional partners of the project were the United Nations Environment, the Bahrain Supreme Council for Environment, and the Bahrain Society of Engineers.