SUKKUR, Dec 2: The government will soon introduce a new pesticides policy to check sale of spurious and adulterated pesticides, under which special courts will be established to try violators of the new policy.

This was said by federal minister of state for food, agriculture and livestock Sikandar Hayat Bosan at a meeting of growers and officers of agriculture department Fauji Fertilizer Corporation at circuit house here on Tuesday.

The minister said that under the policy, the use of plastic bottles/bags in the sale and supply of pesticides would be banned.

He admitted that the present pesticides policy had certain flaws due to which the accused found escape routes even after being caught while selling sub-standard pesticides.

He denied that there was a shortage of fertilizers, specially of the DAP, in the country, saying that 60,8000 tonnes DAP had been imported for the Rabbi crop and hopefully the stock would be increased to 1.1 million tonnes by Dec 31

The minister condemned poor performance of his departments in Sindh, saying that it had badly affected the agriculture sector.

Referring to his visit of Rice Research Institute, Dokri, he said that he was shocked to know that the institute had introduced no new rice variety since 1969.

He deplored that a number of field assistants of grade-5 were given promotions to grade-17 as research assistants though they were only matriculates.

Mr Bosan called upon the growers to adopt scientific methodology and new farming techniques to increase their per acre yield.

For this, he offered his ministry’s cooperation and technical and financial help to the farmers. The meeting was also attended by the agriculture development commissioner/additional secretary, Minfal, DR Mohammad Hanif, agriculture EDO Pathan Shaikh and others.