MULTAN, July 12: Pakistan will in future allow import of only those pesticides from China whose manufacturers will be certified by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry. This was announced by Federal Agriculture Minister Haji Sikander Hayat Bosan while addressing a meeting of the National Assembly’s standing committee on agriculture here on Tuesday. He said the government wanted to ensure quality of the pesticides in order to save farmers especially those who owned small landholdings from the economic damage. “We want to make available quality pesticides to the farmers at cheap rates,” he added.

The minister said the government was in the process to put in place effective laws to curb the menace of adulteration in pesticides once for all. He said for this purpose the product registration method was also being revised from the next year.

Makhdoom Ahmed Alam Anwar, an MNA from Rahim Yar Khan, presided over the standing committee meeting held at the Central Cotton Research Institute.

MNA Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi objected to some of the SROs the government had issued recently viz-a-viz pesticides saying the quality issue had been sacrificed through these notifications.

RAIN: The local Met office has forecast partly cloudy weather with chances of thunderstorm and rain during the next 24 hours in Multan and its suburbs.

On Tuesday, the maximum and minimum temperatures were recorded at 37.1 and 30.8 degree Celsius, respectively.

Humidity was recorded at 69 per cent in the morning and 53 per cent in the evening.