LA TRINIDAD, Benguet -- A collection center for pesticide containers is set to be launched here.
Committee on Agriculture chair Councilor Florence Tingbaoen said an initial four collection centers for containers of used pesticide containers will be placed in Atok and Buguias towns.
Tingbaoen said the towns were identified by stakeholders as centerpoints for use of farming implants and a strategic location to place the collection centers.
There will be three areas in Buguias town and a lone center placed in the Atok area where companies will retrieve their empty pesticide containers.
In 2011, the provincial board moved to create an ordinance mandating proper collection and disposal of empty containers.
The law is known as the empty pesticide container management ordinance.
It involves the triple rinsing of empty containers by farmers themselves; and collection and disposal by distributors, dealers and agrochemical companies in cooperation with the provincial government.
To be able to collect all empty pesticide containers the government is set to have collection centers within the province for easy surrender of the receptacles by its users. Barangay collection centers will be put up for farmers to bring the containers.
Tingbaoen said Croplife, mother company of Syngenta, has been coordinating with the provincial board for the creation of the collection centers in the province.
It was in 2009 when Governor Nestor Fongwan asked the Fertilizer and Pest Authority (FPA) to probe and pull out a herbicide blamed for increasing suicides in the province.
The restricted herbicide, which has no known antidote, was behind suicides in the province raising alarms 2009 and was also pointed as the substance behind farmer suicides last year in a Benguet State University study.
Tingbaoen said formal launching ceremonies of the four collection centers will be held in Loo, Febuary 1.
The ban on the identified fatal herbicide is still in effect and to date.