The Hindu : Govt. cannot ban use of Endosulfan: Gouri

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 05, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala

Govt. cannot ban use of Endosulfan: Gouri

By Our Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM JULY 4. The Agriculture Minister, K.R. Gouri, has said that the State Government has no authority to order a permanent ban on use of Endosulfan.

Opposing an adjournment motion on the subject in the Assembly today, the Minister said all that the Government could do was to tell the State-owned Plantation Corporation of Kerala not to use the pesticide.

This it had done even when there was no recommendation to that effect from the committees constituted to study the issue. It would send a reminder to the corporation not to use the pesticide, she said.

Ms. Gouri said the pesticide was in use in 87 countries. The Plantation Corporation was spraying Endosulfan in its cashew groves for the past 20 years. The corporation was asked to declare a five-year holiday on use of the pesticide after the UDF came to power.

The present Government had also banned the use of the pesticide for two months from August 23, 2001, and later extended it by another one month. Under the Pesticides Act, the State Government had power to do only that much, she explained.

The Government, she said, had constituted a committee to see if the physical deformities and various diseases reported from Kasaragod were due to other reasons like marriage between blood relations or peculiarities of the terrain.

The committee had met twice and its work was still on. Earlier, seeking leave for the adjournment motion, the Leader of the Opposition, V. S. Achuthanandan, accused the Minister of gross insensitivity and said the Government was well within its rights to ban the use of Endosulfan. . He accused the Government of having deliberately overlooked the finding of environmental experts and others that the diseases in the two affected villages were on account of Endosulfan and their recommendation that the pesticide should be banned.

The Minister was still under the influence of the multinational company producing Endosulfan, he alleged.

Intervening in the discussion, the Speaker, Vakkom Purushothaman, asked the Minister why instructions could not be issued to the Plantation Corporation against the use of the pesticide.

She replied that instructions had already been issued. When the Speaker insisted that fresh instructions be issued without any delay, she offered to do so.

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