How could DNCC give larvicide importing task to company without an importing licence?

The company that imported the much-hyped BTI pesticide to destroy Aedes mosquito larvae for the Dhaka North City Corporation does not have an importing licence.

Despite this, the company took part in the open tender and came out as the lowest bidder.

It has now emerged that the company did not import the pesticide, known as Bacillus Thuringiensis Israelensis (BTI), from Singapore as it had claimed.

Instead, it imported the product from a Chinese company called Shandong Ganon Agrochemical, according to customs documents, although tender documents clearly say the BTI must be imported either from the US, EU countries, Singapore, India, and Malaysia.

The Plant Protection Wing (PPW) of the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE), the authority responsible for issuing licence for pesticide imports, has confirmed that the company in question, Marshal Agrovet Chemical Industries Ltd, never took the licence.

The importer claimed they imported 5 tonnes of BTI worth over Tk 53 lakh from a Singaporean company called Best Chemical Co. (S) Pte Ltd (Bestchem).

However, the company said they did not sell any larvicide to Marshal. Earlier this week, Best Chemical went on Facebook to refute Marshal’s claim that the product was procured from it.

On April 30, four days before the tender officially closed, the DNCC sent an interesting letter to the Plant Protection Wing of the DAE requesting to issue a license in favour of the award winner among the bidders to import the item as a Public Health Product.

The city authorities could not explain why they wrote such a letter ahead of the closing of the tender.

Under the rules, tenders cannot be opened before the closing date, and without opening the tender it is not officially possible to know if the bidders have fulfilled the criteria or not, including if they have the required papers.

Entomologists said several laws, including the Pesticide Act of 2018, have been breached by the city authorities and Marshal.

The label on the package supplied by Marshal says it will have to be applied in drains, ditches, and sewers, but Aedes mosquitoes do not breed in those places.

This is how the city corporation, year after year, pickpockets the national exchequer, pushing the city dwellers towards danger.

The DNCC mayor must be held accountable as the crimes committed under him have helped mosquitoes to breed, turning dengue as an epidemic.