Chemically treated fruits, both local and imported, continue to abound the markets of the Rajshahi city and the district as well, in absence of strong anti-adulteration drives of the government.
Among the local produces the Fajli variety of mangoes is the most chemically treated fruit while apples, oranges, grapes and dates undergo the process more than other imported varieties.
On Wednesday evening a mobile court launched by the Directorate of National Consumers Rights Protection seized a carton of grapes treated with formalin from a shop at Laxmipur in the city.
The directorate officials on August 10 fined another roadside fruit vendor at Saheb Bazar Zero Point from whom they seized 200kg chemically treated dates.
Calling such drives scanty compared to the scale of fruit adulteration going on in the region, sources in the city and district markets informed that the activities continued unabated.
Despite the media and public outcry ripening of fruits particularly mangoes and bananas with calcium carbide, a highly hazardous chemical substance, goes on under the nose of the law enforcers, sources said.
They named some other chemicals, marketed as crop-field pesticides by their manufacturers, which were used by the profiteers as ripening agents.
Of these pesticides, Profit, Prolank and Eden marketed by Alfa Company and Ethereal by Bayer Crop Science Company are more frequently used for artificially ripening fruits.
A 10-minute soak of green fruits like mango, banana and papaya in 10 litres of water mixed with 10 millilitres of any of these pesticides is enough to make them ripe in a very short period, several fruit traders in the city said.
Different textile dyes are also used to ripen fruits, they said.
The Bangladesh Pure Food Ordinance 2005 prohibits use of any chemicals or ingredients such as calcium carbide, formalin, pesticides, artificial colours and flavours, that may harm, intoxicate or endanger human body.
The chemically ripened fruits are openly sold both at the permanent shops in different markets and by the mobile vendors on the roads in the city, all over the district and even outside.
Many fruit wholesalers in the city confessed to putting formalin on the fruits that had been ripened with calcium carbide.
They do it to prevent the fruits from getting rotted, they said. Such fruits although look fresh taste sour.
Local fruit traders, however, claimed that they had to use formalin because the fruits that were sent from the northern districts and other parts of the country were already ripened with chemicals, which made them prone to rot earlier than expected.
Local watchdogs blamed the government authorities for not giving sufficient efforts for preventing such acts while the latter claimed they did their best.
Kazi Gias, president of district Consumer Association of Bangladesh Rajshahi unit, said they had continued motivational activities among the fruit growers and food manufacturers and traders against adulteration.
'But as a watch body we don't have the necessary equipment for detecting adulteration of foods that are going on,' he admitted.
Zamat Khan, general secretary of Rajshahi Raksha Sangram Parishad, a pressure group, demanded setting up of mobile courts on the highways to prevent entry of chemically treated fruits in the Rajshahi city.
Sukumar Kundu, deputy director of the DNCRP, an agency under the commerce ministry, told New Age that they were trying as hard as they could to improve the situation in this regard.
Source : New Age
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