The government’s plant protection yesterday issued an ultimatum for exporters, asking them to stop dispatching contaminated vegetable consignments with fake phytosanitary certificates. Or else, the exporters would have to face business termination to the European Union, which for the first time had raised questions about the competence of the quarantine authority in Bangladesh.
EU policy stipulates that no plant or plant product will enter any of its 28 states without phytosanitary certificate from the national plant protection wing, stating that the consignments contained no pest, bacteria, virus and substances harmful for the environment and human health.
Over the past few months, the EU states detected over 100 consignments either contaminated with pests and viruses, although some had phytosanitary certificates from the Plant Protection Wing of Bangladesh. Then again, many of the consignments had no such certificates at all.
In a letter to the Bangladesh mission in Brussels, the EU said the situation did not improve despite the government’s repeated assurance of improvements. It also threatened to stop vegetable import from Bangladesh.
Bangladesh ambassador to Brussels Ismat Jahan informed the matter to the commerce secretary asking for a national plan of action to stop such practices. The ambassador’s letter prompted the quarantine wing to summon the vegetable exporters and convey the message.
Bangladesh’s vegetable export, mainly destined to the EU, fetches $200m every year.
The envoy requested the Commerce Ministry to send a plan of action to her by July 25 so that she could send it to the EU authorities and save vegetable export.
The EU has already banned betel leaf import from Bangladesh as it contained bacteria salmonella.
“Most of the phytosanitary certificates the exporters attached with the consignments to the EU are fake. We do not compromise with the quality of the products,” Ahsan Ullah, a deputy director of the Plant Protection Wing of the Department of Agricultural Extension, told the Dhaka Tribune after the meeting with the exporters.
He said, “We have made it clear today that unless they stopped dispatching vegetables with fake phytosanitary certificates, we will do everything possible to stop their export business.”
Quarantine officer Hafizur Rahman, who attended the meeting, told the Dhaka Tribune: “We have asked them to give undertaking to us that they will not counterfeit the phytosanitary certificates. And they agreed to do so”.
Exporter Mahbubur Rahman admitted that the quarantine officials had asked them to give undertaking about not giving any counterfeit phytosanitary certificates.
He, however, declined to elaborate.
The Awami League in 2011 formulated the Plant Quarantine Act that empowered the government to turn the existing Plant Protection Wing into the National Plant Quarantine Authority. The law came into effect from July 1.
But the authority is yet to be formed. Institution of such authority would equip the Plant Protection Wing with better laboratory facilities and human resources.
