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Malaysia pesticide ban
could be reversed
By Baradan
Kuppusamy
KUALA LUMPUR - To know paraquat is to
like it, says a promotional video by the Swiss-based
Syngenta, the world's biggest agri-chemical company. But
for a plantation worker and weed-sprayer named Anggamah,
to know paraquat - and she is intimate with it - is to
hate it.
Every day Anggamah, 47, lugs an
eight-kilogram tank on her back to spray paraquat, a
highly toxic herbicide, on broadleaf weeds in an
oil-palm plantation about 60 kilometers south of the
capital. For this, she gets RM14 (US$3.70) a day.
She has been mixing and spraying paraquat for 16
years. Anggamah, a divorced mother of two who used one
name, looks chronically fatigued and aged. She suffers
from back pain, giddiness, nausea and swelling. Her
nails are gradually falling off. A 1999 blood test shows
low plasma enzyme levels.
All these are classic
symptoms of prolonged exposure to paraquat, a widely
used but highly toxic contact herbicide popularly
referred to here as kopi-o (black coffee). It got
its name because the dark, dank liquid is often used to
commit suicide.
"Environmentalists told me last
year that the long battle to ban paraquat has been won,"
Anggamah said, referring to a government announcement
last August that paraquat will be banned in 2005. "We
were all overjoyed." But the battle to ban paraquat is
far from over.
Since the government decision was
made, plantation companies and agro-chemical giants such
as Syngenta have launched a campaign to get the ban
reversed. They have importuned the media, plantation
workers, their trade union, fruit growers and rice
farmers to join forces with big business to revoke the
ban.
Anggamah said: "I think it [the ban] is a
lost cause."
This month, about 30 rice farmers
in Kepala Batas in Penang state staged a demonstration
against the paraquat ban. They claimed, in a memorandum
to the government, to represent 17,000 rice farmers and
argued that paraquat is cheap, effective and proven.
They quoted a now-famous Syngenta phrase
attributed to John McGillivray, general manager of the
giant's local unit Syngenta Prop Protection, "Paraquat
is a dream product."
But "the farmers fail to
mention that paraquat is a dangerous poison, not only to
users but also to the environment and to everyone in the
food chain", said Irene Fernandez, director of the
non-government Tenaganita group.
Nevertheless,
the farmers represent a powerful political force -
influential enough to revoke the ban especially in an
election year such as now.
The government had
banned paraquat, classified here as Class 1(B) because
it is a highly toxic poison, responsible for 70 percent
of all workplace poisoning, and because less-toxic
alternatives are available. Manufacturers and users must
complete their stocks by 2005. No new licenses are to be
issued after August 2002.
There are more than 20
paraquat manufacturers in Malaysia. One brand stands out
for its popularity and large share of the herbicide
market - Gramoxone, manufactured by Syngenta. Paraquat
makes up about half of the total herbicide market in
Malaysia, worth RM300 million ($79 million).
Thus far, campaigners who want the paraquat ban
revoked are mobilizing Malaysia's 500,000 oil-palm
smallholders and 300,000 rice farmers, who together form
an extremely important rural vote bank for the ruling
National Front government. These smallholders and
farmers say they prefer paraquat because it is cheap and
effective compared to other herbicides, which also take
longer to kill weeds.
For their part, activists
have also stepped up efforts to counter this campaign.
Since June, they have launched a postcard campaign
urging workers to write to Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohamad, urging him not to lift the ban, and have formed
a coalition of 14 non-government organizations to spread
the anti-paraquat message.
Tenaganita has formed
a network of sprayers opposed to using paraquat because
of its side-effects, which activists say include vaginal
burns, stillbirths and respiratory problems. "These
ailments affect 30,000 women sprayers in rubber and
oil-palm plantations," Fernandez said, referring to a
study completed in 2002 on the effects of paraquat.
Syngenta, however, has rejected the study,
called "Poisoned and Unsilenced", as unscientific and
says it does not show evidence that women were at more
risk. "Despite paraquat being used by virtually all
sprayers, symptoms which have sometimes been associated
with exposure to paraquat have a very low prevalence
(less than 1 percent)," a Syngenta Malaysia spokesman
said.
The Malaysian Trade Union Congress, the
country's biggest trade-union federation, is backing the
campaign to keep the paraquat ban, but not all workers'
groups do. The National Union of Plantation Workers
(NUPW), the largest union of plantation workers, wants
the ban revoked. The union says it is not against
paraquat, but wants employers to give more protective
clothing and training for sprayers such as Anggamah.
Its stand has drawn criticism. "A key source of
their income is the advertisements that Syngenta places
every week in Sangamani, the NUPW magazine," said V A
Maneyvannan, program coordinator at Tenaganita, a
multi-role advocacy group. "The union is putting profits
over welfare of its members."
But while a senior
NUPW official, who asked not to be identified, said that
while Syngenta is indeed an advertiser in the magazine,
its announcements are general and "merely tell workers
to take adequate safety measures when spraying ... it
does not promote paraquat use ... we don't think there
is any conflict of interest".
Meantime, other
herbicide manufacturers fear a reversal of the paraquat
ban and are looking ahead to fill the vacuum that such a
ban would create, by promoting less-toxic Class 2
lyphosphates-based herbicides. For example, Bayer
CropScience is pushing its Basta 15 and Monsanto its
Round Up as safer alternatives. Bayer has allocated
RM2.8 million to work with the National Institute of
Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to teach farmers
safety precautions when handling less-toxic herbicides.
"The paraquat ban should be enforced as soon as
possible because of its harmful side-effects," NIOSH
president Lee Lam Thye said in an interview.
"Less-harmful herbicides should be used."
(Inter
Press Service)
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