Basseterre, St. Kitts, February 14, 2020 (SKNIS): The Department of Agriculture along with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) held a workshop on February 13 at the Department of Agriculture in Laguerite where they discussed the management of empty pesticide containers.
Director of Agriculture, Melvin James said that the regional project by the FAO is about getting rid of obsolete pesticide containers.
Mr. James defined obsolete pesticide containers as “pesticides that we’ve had in storage for many years and that are no longer effective as pesticides.”
Global FAO Pesticides Registration Toolkit trainer at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Guy Mathurin said “the idea of this workshop today is not really just to hear about empty pesticide containers and management, but to see if we can put together a committee who will be responsible going forward for seeing those empty containers are managed properly.”
Mr. Mathurin highlighted that this “will include all stakeholders from the importers and distributors to the users to the extension officers, to governments as well and also the agencies like environment and customs.”
The FAO representative also highlighted that “this is part of a regional project which involves 11 countries. “These countries are Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname.
