LAHORE: The increasing volume of pesticides confiscated for being spurious or adulterated and dumped at various police stations in Punjab is creating an environmental hazard and a headache for the agriculture as well as police department.

The Pesticides Act 1992 prescribes six-month jail term and a fine of Rs25,000 on first offence of adulteration and increases the penalty to one-year jail and Rs50,000 fine for repeated offence(s). But the aggravating situation is concerning farmers, particularly cotton growers who are the major consumers of farm medicines.

The escalating gravity of the issue may be gauged from the fact that in the first six months of the ongoing calendar year at least 811,554 litres of fake/adulterated pesticides have been confiscated against 202,807 litres seized during the whole last year. Likewise, around 315,164 litres of spurious pesticides had been confiscated during 2019 and 136,590 litres during 2017, reveals a letter written by the agriculture authorities to seek proper disposal of the confiscated drugs.

Agri dept doesn’t have incinerator facility for safe disposal

Agriculture department officials say that the anti-adulterated pesticide campaign is a regular feature wherein tonnes of adulterated and/or spurious pesticides are confiscated and dumped at various police stations as Mal-Muqadama (case property).

Laying such a huge quantity of pesticides in the open is causing serious hazards for environment and human life as well because there is no incineration facility available with the agriculture department for their safe disposal in an environmentally sound manner to comply with regional regulations and relevant international standards etc.

Normally, the soil and weather degrade most pesticide sprays dumped on the ground. But, dumping of a large amount of pesticide overburdens nature’s ability to break down the chemicals, while some pesticides may leach through the soil and contaminate the subsoil water.

The officials say that there have been incidents in which the confiscated pesticides are reported to have evaporated. They fear that stocks of the farm medicines are rather being returned to the market.

To deal with the situation, the department has suggested to the provincial government that incinerators should be commissioned at provincial borders to burn the fake/adulterated pesticides confiscated during the raids in an environmentally sound manner, they say.

They say that the Department of Plant Protection and Punjab government should install incinerators at more than one location in the country like near Punjab-Sindh border and Punjab-Khyber Pakhtunkhwa border for proper disposal of the pesticides.

Muhammad Azam Cheema, chairman of a pesticide company, says the sale of such a huge amount of spurious or adulterated farm medicines is a matter of concern for the industry as well as poor farmers and the culprits must be exposed.

He, however, stresses on segregation of the seized drugs’ data saying the stocks taken into custody on misbranding complaints are also being held as Mal-Muqadma and dumped at police stations.These misbranded products, he believes, are a more potent threat due to their severer lethality as compared with fake drugs.

About the disposal of the impounded products, he says it must not be an issue because private incinerator facilities, particularly of the high-temperature cement industry, are available to do the job instead of waiting for the installation of government incinerators.

He cautions that if improperly disposed of the half-burnt formulations may leak into the air or seep into the soil, causing health hazards for human, animal and plant life.

The agriculture department had earlier disposed of 1,041.5 tonnes of expired pesticides back in 2011. Of this 1,000 tonnes pesticides had been lying with the extension wing offices across Punjab and 41.5 tonnes with the defunct Punjab Agriculture Development & Supplies Corporation at its Faisalabad and Multan stores.

Published in Dawn, October 14th, 2021