MULTAN, Oct 21: Implementation of the Agriculture Pesticides Rules, 1973, amended recently through a statutory notification (SRO), has become a question mark because of some objections raised by the stakeholders.
Sources in the Minfal said it was the prerogative of the federal agriculture secretary to decide the fate of the objections/suggestions regarding any SRO on behalf of the federal government.
But an extraordinary meeting of Agricultural Pesticides Technical Advisory Committee (Aptac), called only on a short notice of 48 hours on October 4, discussed the objections raised against the SRO.
An Aptac member, who did not want to be named, told that the representatives of the Punjab government in the meeting sought to put off implementation of the amended pesticides rules because “doing away with the role of distributors at once is not possible.”
The Aptac members were of the opinion that it had yet to be evaluated that whether it was right to discuss/review amendments, which had earlier been passed unanimously, again at the advisory committee forum.
The amendments in the rules were proposed by the Aptac— a subsidiary of the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock—in its 36th meeting held on May 31 last in Islamabad with Minfal secretary Salik Nazeer Ahmad in the chair.
The pesticides business has an annual turnover of around Rs12 billions to Rs14 billions and all the pesticides are being imported because the country has yet to progress in this vital field.
The 36th Aptac meeting proposed following amendments:
The importers/formulators should themselves undertake repacking/refiling of pesticides imported or formulated locally at a plant under their strict supervision, responsibility and label for quality and then pass on to distributors in retail packing as against the current practice where the importers sell the pesticides in bulk quantity to the distributors, who then market the products under their own label and price, thus, creating a situation where fixing responsibility of sub-standard and under-strength chemicals becomes difficult.
The importers should give legal warranty to distributors or dealers, as the case may be, at the time of delivery and the distribution whenever involved should give warranty to the dealers. All the registered/permitted pesticides may be sold under local brand names and they should be sold in packings containing uniform quantity, such as, 250ml, 500ml, or 1000ml instead of in vogue packings of 400ml and 900ml.
The prices mentioned on the labels should be the same as written on the invoice. Besides, the committee standardized strengths of various registered pesticides with a direction to withdraw all other formulations of these products. The Aptac also directed that the label should indicate the name of each pest, against which it is effective, instead of only mentioning the groups like bollworms, follar diseases, etc. For herbicides, name of each weed should be indicated rather than just saying broad- leaved weeds, grasses and sedges.
Later on, the Minfal issued an SRO (782(I)2003) to amend the existing pesticides rules on August 11 last in line with the Aptac proposals and announced that implementation of the amended rules would start from November 1, 2003. However, a period of 30 days was given from the date of the issuance of the SRO for objections and suggestions with a pledge that these should be taken into consideration by the federal government.
Sources in the Minfal said the main objection came within the given period was from Croplife Pakistan, an association mainly representing the multi-national pesticides firms in the country. The Croplife objection to the SRO was that it did not see how a legal warranty could safeguard the quality of pesticides because a guaranteed product could be tempered with, copied or adulterated.
In one of its recent correspondences with the Minfal authorities, the association observed “the present law clearly defines the responsibility by stating that, whosoever will possess adulterated and substandard material be it importer, formulator, distributor, or retailer, will be punished. Therefore, the proposed amendment regarding legal warranty (only by the importers) will create a confusion regarding responsibility.
The association claimed that its members could not give a legal warranty to the dealers because they could not be held responsible for their (dealers’) action. It further pointed out that the dealers had been left out of facing any responsibility in case of the sale of adulterated/substandard pesticides. It suggested that another clause be incorporated in the SRO that “the dealer where involved should in turn give legal warranty at the time of pesticides sale to the farmer/consumer”. When talked to the vice chancellor of Pakistan crop protection association, which represents the national and local pesticides firms, Sajid Ikram alleged that some unscrupulous elements did not want to streamline pesticides market because they were earning huge profits due to flaws in the existing rules.
Farmers vision forum chief executive Khwaja Muhammad Shuaib alleged that this year cotton crop had been ruined mainly due to the manipulations of some money-minting pesticides firms. He said the growers used pesticides of Rs4 billions more this year as compared to the last year but even then they could not save their crop from the pest flare-up.