Agriculture Minister at loggerheads with Registrar of Pesticides

The Minister of Agriculture and the Registrar of Pesticides are loggerheads over a dispute of cancelling a previous gazette notification.

Agriculture Minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage has called for disciplinary action and removal of the Registrar of Pesticides Dr. J.A. Sumith for cancelling a previous gazette notification which enables imports of pesticides including Glyphosate, but the Registrar is insisting that he cannot be removed. 

Dr Sumith in the gazette notification has stated that the decision was taken on the advice of the Pesticide Technical and Advisory Committee.

The order effectively allows the import of five agro chemicals which were banned earlier.

This is not the first time that the Agriculture Minister was at loggerheads with his officials and already three ministry secretaries and an advisor has left.

Already the Agriculture Minister and the Ministry Secretary Prof Udith Jayasinghe over the weekend have been making contradictory statements on reversing the decision on import of Agro chemicals.