The wheat imported from Brazil is edible by human, according to a report submitted by the director general of the Directorate General of Food to the High Court.
Foyez Ahmed, director general of the Food Directorate, handed over the report to Deputy Attorney General Tapos Kumar Biswas in compliance with the HC order and the DAG submitted the report before the HC bench of Justice Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque and Justice Taher Md Saifur Rahman.
After accepting the report, the High court fixed July 8 for passing an order on this issue after the writ petitioner prayed for time for hearing.
Deputy Attorney General Tapash Kumar Biswas argued for the state while Mahbub Uddin Khokon stood for the petitioner.
After the hearing Khikon told reporters that the food department claims the wheat is consumable, but findings of other orgnasiations say it is rotten and sub-standard.
“It seems that the food department’s claim is not right. The court has set July 8 as more time was sought,” he said.
Khokon said, the directorate general of food has claimed the wheat was edible but some laboratory tests they submitted along with the report before the court did not claim that the wheat will be edible.
The report also claimed that certain wheat which was supposed to be imported as per an agreement, was not sent from Brazil. The imported wheat had broken pieces and also was less in weight.
“This is not a complete report”, he said.
The High Court on June 30 had asked authorities to clarify whether the wheat imported from Brazil is suitable for human consumption.
The court asked the secretary of the Food Ministry and the director general of the food directorate to elucidate within 72 hours on the quality of the imported wheat. The bench fixed July 5 for holding further hearing.
A lawyer named Pavel Mia filed the petition on Monday on the basis of reports published in a number of national dailies.
In the petition, Pavel sought the court’s directive for getting the “rotten wheat” tested at the labs of Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institute (BSTI) and Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (BARI). He also demanded a probe by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) in the allegations.
Recently, media reports said that thousands of tonnes of wheat imported from Brazil and supplied by Singapore-based contractor Olam International was of substandard quality.
A couple of government studies concluded that the wheat imported from Brazil in February and March is of sub-standard quality and a significant volume was rotten.
One of the studies by the food directorate found that six out of the 30 tested samples of the Brazilian wheat had living insects.
The other test by the BCSIR found that all the supplied samples contained higher amount of shrunken and broken kernels than the supply specification.
After news on rotten when surfaced in the media a few days ago, political and rights organisations demanded resignation of Food Minister Kamrul Islam, who, despite having the studies, claimed before media that there was nothing with the imported grains.
Earlier, the minister had said that the government was not going to order wheat from Brazil again because of the poor quality.
