Directive Issued to Establish Procedures for the Management of Risks from any Transaction Involving Modified Organisms No. 06/2018”

This Directive shall apply to manage any unforeseen risk arising from deliberate and unintentional release during making, use in teaching, research, import, export, transit, contained production, transport, storage, processing and putting in the market of any modified organisms. In this directive the Risk arising from unintentional release includes, inter alia; 1) Spillage from storage or transportation, 2) release out of Human error; 3) Release out of force majeure.
Firstly the Directive establishes that the ministry before recommending an application for approval for any transaction, must make sure that the application contains; a. An emergency plan which includes information on safety measures and procedures to be adopted and, b. Mechanisms through which the information shall be made available to the persons likely to be affected by the transaction. The Minister shall establish an Emergency Response Group in order to respond to any emergency cases related to the transaction of modified organism. Where there is an emergency related to transaction of modified organisms, the applicant within twenty-four hours must inform the Emergency Response Group about the emergency providing certain prescribed information. The applicant also in case of Emergency shall following certain prescribed Risk Management approaches.