HYDERABAD, Sept 8: The Sindh Agriculture Department has decided that in future no pesticides product will be registered until it was certified environmentally safe with zero hazardous effect on human and wildlife.

The impact assessment to ascertain whether a particular pesticide was environmentally safe will be carried out by the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency. This was decided at a meeting of the Sindh Pesticides Standardization Committee in Karachi on Wednesday.

Sindh Agriculture Secretary Nazar Hussain Mahar presided over the meeting.

It was decided that to ensure transparency of testing of suspected samples of pesticides drawn by agriculture inspectors, the practise of coding would be banned.

“Now the pesticides samples will be sent directly to quality control laboratories along with name of the brand and the company”. A spokesman for the department said the secretary expressed concern over sale of substandard and adulterated pesticides which was harming agriculture of the province.

He called upon representatives of pesticides companies, who also attended the meeting, to check the quality themselves.

In this connection, the agriculture department will organize agricultural workshops in Larkana, Sukkur and Sakrand on September 9, 10 and 15, respectively. The secretary will review progress of watercourses improvement under the National Watercourses Improvement Programme and Sindh On-farm Water Management Project in Jamshoro, Dadu, Larkana, Shikarpur, Ghotki and Khairpur from Sept 8 to 10.

EXAMS: The Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education has announced that the HSC Part-II (class XII) supplementary examination 2005 will commence from Nov 15.