Parliamentary committee raises issues ranging from pesticides use to monkey menace

The very first meeting of the Agriculture, Cooperative and Natural Resources Committee under the House of Representatives today decided to draw the government’s attention towards the urgency to promote domestic production of vegetables and ensure the effective testing procedures to detect presence of pesticides in imported vegetables.

Being based on suggestions of committee members, the meeting wanted the government to announce programmes aiming to promote domestic production of vegetables and to control the use of excessive insecticides in vegetables. The meeting stressed the need for making the country self-sufficient on vegetables when the nation is enduring economic crisis. “The overuse of pesticides in fruits and vegetables has its serious implications on public health and the government is needed to carry out a reliable testing to detect the level of presence of harmful substances on the imported produces within the transits,” the meeting concluded.

The committee members expressed their concerns over the situation forcing peasants to clamour for irrigation facility, fertilizer, food and seeds in the agricultural nation. As they assessed, the government policies to promote domestic productions and minimize imports, targets are unachievable in absence of plans and visions. The meeting also urged the government to prioritise the control of monkey menace increasing lately in the mid-hills and in the western hills.

The meeting was chaired by committee senior-most member (by-age) Nawal Kishore Shah Sudi. Though the committee has ministers from related ministers as its ex-officio members, no minister was present n the today’s meeting.