Rawalpindi: Muhammad Mahmood, Secretary Agriculture Punjab directed agriculture department staff regarding spurious pesticides and fertilizer sales which must be end up now. Mahmood said that farmers across Punjab have reservations about quality of some available spurious pesticides. These kind of pesticides are one of the major factor for declining agriculture productivity. Insects and pests that attack on crop also get stronger if these kinds of pesticides use against them. These pesticides remain turn out to be ineffective against major pests and diseases.
Mahmood says that an extensive campaign against adulterated and spurious pesticides since September 2016 has been launched by agriculture department and worth of many million rupees adulterated pesticides banned until now. During this campaign, Assistant Director, Pest Warning district Sahiwal was got informed and he raided along with police team on a factory located in area of Montgomery Biscuit factory. Factory workers were busy in fake labelling on expired dated adulterated pesticides. Factory was running with a name of Agri Farm Services.
Assistant Director and police team confiscated worth of million rupees adulterated pesticides from there. Store In-charge namely Abdul Waqar and two other workers namely Muhammad Tanvir and Muhammad Shahid were arrested. FIR has been launched under section 23(a), 21 A as per Agriculture Pesticides Ordinance 1971 amended in 1997 under Act of Pakistan 1973.
Spokesman of Agriculture Punjab has said that adulterated pesticides business is major source of declining agriculture productivity and people who are involved in it, will see themselves in hot water soon as under direction by Secretary Agriculture, department will deal with them following zero-tolerance policy.