LAHORE: The Punjab government has formed a task force to monitor quality of pesticides and recommend measures for reducing their prices.

PTI MPA from Muzaffargarh Alamdar Abbas Qureshi will head the task force, while provincial secretary and additional secretary of agriculture, ex-MPA Ghulam Murtaza Rahim Khar, Dr Waseem Hassan Langrial, Mian Abdul Hannan, Mudassar Saeed, Mumtaz M Khan, retired Brig Hameed Khalil and Kamran Khursheed will be its members.

A spokesperson for the agriculture department says pesticide manufacturing firms have been told to print bar code on their products and the step has been declared mandatory to curb supply of spurious drugs in the market. The body will also hold meetings with pesticide manufacturing companies to reduce drug prices for making them affordable for small landholders.

Published in Dawn, December 8th, 2018