MULTAN, July 2: Various stakeholders of the pesticides business have raised serious objections over a manner in which a statutory notification was issued by the federal ministry of food, agriculture and livestock.

Although the statutory notification (SRO 399(I)/2004)0 bearing the date of June 2, 2004, it was made public on June 30. As per the normal practice, a period of one month has always been given to the stakeholders and people at large from the date of the issuance of an SRO for suggestions and objections before starting implementation of a notification.

But, in the case of SRO 399 no time period has been given for the purpose and according to the sources in the agriculture ministry the authorities there had even started implementing the rules proposed in the SRO.

Apex representative body of the national and multi-national pesticides firms, CropLife Pakistan in its letter to the federal agriculture secretary has raised several objections over the SRO including the one about its release in a hush-hush manner just a couple of days before expiry of the 30-day mandatory period.

Besides CropLife, some other key players in the pesticides business and a couple of farmers' organizations have also objected to the SRO in black and white. Farmers Vision Forum in its letter to the secretary Minfal has showed concern that if implemented in its present form the SRO 399 would increase the prices of pesticides.

Citing sub-section 1 of the section 29 of the Agricultural Pesticides Ordinance, 1971, the CropLife said that consultation with the statutory body Agricultural Pesticides Technical Advisory Committee (Aptac) is must to make rules for carrying provisions of the ordinance into effect.

Most of the amendments proposed in the SRO have not been tabled for discussion and approval at the Aptac forum. Critics of the SRO say that the amendments proposed in it are being introduced only to distort the recommendations of the 36th Aptac meeting held last year on May 31st.

The Aptac had recommended certain far-reaching amendments to mend flaws in the APO that gave opportunity to the pesticides firms to exploit the farming community. The Minfal authorities kept on delaying implementation on the Aptac proposals by putting off their notification under one pretext or other until January this year.

On January 13, the agriculture ministry though had issued an SRO 21(I)/2004 in compliance with the Aptac decisions but some of the proposals were missing including standardized packing and the label price in accordance with the invoice price.

Therefore, another SRO was being expected to incorporate the items which had been missed in the SRO 21. However, the stakeholders were taken aback on release of the SRO with the proposed amendments.

According to the critics, the method proposed in the SRO that the new chemistries imported under form-17 would automatically be shifted to form-1 after three years of their application in the field is vague and against the spirit of the registration of pesticides under form-1 which dealt only with the branded products whose global patent rights have yet to be expired.

Furthermore, the SRO proposed that the pesticides registered once under form-1 would remain in this category for three years before placing on the form-16, which deals with the products whose global patent right had been expired and they are now available in the world under generic names.