During the middle of the fifties of the last century Late Mr. Abdul Latif Biswas of Manikgonj in charge of the Agricultural Department of the cabinet of Govt. of Pakistan. Under his guidance, a wing of the central plant protection department was inaugurated in Dhaka as “aerial pest control. As per the initiative of Mr. Biswas, an officer was appointed in each district and 3-5 Mokaddems were also appointed under each officer. The responsibilities of these teams were to inform Agricultural Department regarding the status of infestation of insects/pests after carrying out of the proper survey. Their responsibility also includes supporting the pest control drive at the field level. From that period plant protection scheme was initiated in this country under the Department of Agriculture. As a part of this scheme, one PPI (Plant protection Inspector) was appointed in each district, whose responsibility was to assist the extension officer at the field level and also to help farmers free of charge with regard to control of pests. Central plant protection department of agriculture used to procure the pesticides available in the global market during that period like DDT, Eldrin, BHC, etc. to Agril. Dept. of the provincial Govt. under a grant from FAO. These pesticides were being stored in all agricultural offices at the thana level.
Liquid products were being collected from big drums by hand-driven pumps and powder-type products were used to supply to the farmers by weighing with local balance. This type of practice resulted in huge wastage, misuse, and loss of products. No one used to know the proper application of pesticides. The Central Plant protection department used to supply local agricultural departments the hand spray machine and motorized spray machine along with pesticide. Since the ordinary farmers were not familiar with proper use of the machine, very often the machines got inoperative, as such huge stock of faulty machine piled up in every thana agricultural office. After the sixties, Methyl Parathion (first organophosphate) was added with earlier three insecticides. Till then there was no fungicide and herbicides and farmers were also totally ignorant regarding this. FAO also used to collect insecticides from those countries, who were the donors. As such up to the liberation period products from the companies of the USA and West Germany origin were included in the list of supply. During 1962-63 as per availability of the grant of the donors and also on the basis of local demand folidol, aldrin, dieldrin, sevin, sumithion, emidan, malathion, dipterex, metasystox, heptachlor etc. among insecticides and daopon, 2,4 D among herbicides and granosan, agrosan as seed treatment were included. In 1968, the EPADC called an international tender to purchase those mentioned products under the financial assistance of USAID. Under special grant this procurement was a huge one in those days. After procurement, these products as per the requirement of the agricultural department were then supplied to different agricultural offices throughout the country. In 1964-65 Ciba-Geigy signed a barter agreement with the provincial government to supply product about of 3 core worth, In 1966-67 Government of Japan under Yen Credit supplied an insecticide called Sumithion from Sumitomo Corporation.
The first use of granular insecticide was carried out in 1968. Under the assistance of USAID, Ciba-Geigy supplied almost 1000 to 15G granular insecticides based on maize extract carriers. At the same time, Sevedol 8G was also included. Since many complications were taken place regarding the carrier of Diazinon, later of Ciba-Geigy had to change carrier. In order to formulate insecticides locally, USAID extended its support to a local company called Insecticide enterprise. Govt handed over almost two-acre of land to this company in tejgaon industrial area. At present this land has converted into the factory of the polar ice cream. That formulation company with an agreement of the agricultural department used to import the raw materials of liquid insecticides and had to formulate the same. During the end of sixties, another formulation plant was established namely the Agro enterprise in Chittagong. After the liberation of Bangladesh, BCIC took over the charge of the plant. Later on, Ciba-Geigy took the charge of this factory under joint ownership with BCIC. Now this factory are being run by Syngenta Bangladesh Limited.
After the liberation of the country standardization committee was formed under the leadership of the deputy director of the plant protection wing. Heads of different research institutes and other specialists were the members of the committee. Normally after evaluation of toxicological and efficacy data pesticides were included in the list. By the end of the seventies, quite a number of new products got the inclusion i.e Bidrin, Vapona, DDVP, Nexion, Dimethoate, Elsan, Diazinon 10G, copper oxychloride, mancozeb, bramoxone, zinc phosphide, padan etc. But no mentionable tender was called for the procurement of these new products. Only by the extreme end of seventies for some granular insecticide one tender was floated. Immediately after the liberation, as per the need of a new government, USAID through its own initiative procured some pesticide manufactured in the USA & handed it over to the Agricultural Ministry, Government of Bangladesh.
In absence of proper care and not being applied as per recommendation huge stock of unused products were got stockpiled in different thana agricultural offices throughout the country which was inherited from Pakistan period. Most of those products’ Efficacy period were already expired.
Under this circumstance, the Agricultural ministry in 1974 gave an order to sell all types of pesticides in the open market with 50% subsidy. However this measure instead of improving the situation, rather further deteriorated. As such donor countries expressed their concern and from that period they suggesting to hand over the process of procurement and distribution of pesticides to the private sector. Donor countries further collected a number of reports through a number of committees regarding misuse, misapplication, and presence of date expired pesticides in large volume
Pesticide Ordinance was passed in 1971 at the Pakistan Parliament, later on it was ratified in Bangladesh National Parliament in 1977.
To initiate the privatization process of the pesticides sector, the Pesticide Association of Bangladesh was formed in 1976 involving all local suppliers, Ciba-Geigy, Burmah Easstern, ICI, Bayer, Sandoz, BASF, Cyanamid, Krishi Banija Protisthan, Shetu Corporation altogether first formed an Ad-hoc Committee. The Chairman of this committee was Mr. Amjad Ali of ICI.
Different committees formed by the donor countries sat with the members of the association several times to formulate the terms of reference regarding privatization. A pioneering role in this respect played by the Agricultural Secretary Late A Z M Obaidullah Khan. He overwhelmingly accepted all the proposals of the association during two meetings held with him and he took only ten minutes to approve the proposals forwarded by the association.
Later on Government formed a committee to finalize all the issues related to privatization under the chairmanship of the then Member, Planning Commission Dr. Al-Muzahid. After two consecutive meetings of the committee. The government finally accepted in principle the proposal of privatization. Consequently, in November 1979, the Ministry of Agriculture issued a gazette mentioning the handover of the process of procurement & distribution of pesticides to the private sector. Prior to the proclamation of this gazette, the Government imposed mandatory to take over leftover stock & all pesticides by each respective manufacturer company after paying 50% discounted price. Quite substantial time was required to implement the process of privatization at the field level. Implementation of pesticide rules towards privatization took quite a long time, Later on by the end of 1985 when the “Rules” was published, gradually implementation process of Pesticides Rules took its force at the respective level. (The writer is a veteran personality of pesticide industry & also one of the past Chairman of the association)