Illegal fogging danger
Liew-Ann Phang
PETALING JAYA: About 80% of 84 fogging contractors registered in Selangor should have been prosecuted for operating without a license from the Pesticide Board. Instead they were given lucrative contracts with the authorities turning a blind eye to such illegal practice.
The day off "instant fogging contractors" will hopefully now come to the end. The state government and the 12 local council will meet official of the Pest Control Association of Malaysia (PCAM) today to rectify the situation.
It is learnt many of these pesticide companies received lucrative two year contracts - each worth RM2 million - under the previous state administration.
The PCAM is concerned that having non-professionals on board will be detrimental in the fight against dengue as over time, the mosquitoes build a resistance to the effects of the poisons administered.
Its president, Ang Tan Loong, said the firm registered under the Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Ministry's Pesticides Board may not have received proper instructions on the dosages required to overcome the resistant that the Aedes mosquitoes has developed.
"The risk involve in having unregistered and unqualified contractors carrying out fogging is the lack of expertise in the dosages involved, and new methods to rid the larvae," Ang told theSun yesterday.
He said PCAM has been invited by the state government to draw up the strategies in today's meeting with 25 representatives of local councils, mostly comprising health directors.
Ang inferred that some in the state government had aided and abetted the unlicensed contractors, by giving excuse that they have license to store and sell chemicals.
"But they do not have license to administer these pesticides, that is the pest control operator's license," Ang said.
In his letter to the state government offering PCAM's services, Ang said the present mode of thermal fogging is constrained as the mosquitoes tend to "flee" and are repelled from one fogged area to another only to return when they again are fogged in the particular area.
Over time, the mosquitoes build a resistance to the effect of the poisons used.
"Our main offensive is to create a smoke screen with the circumventing Anti-Spiral Fogging System which create a smoke trap, enveloping from the perimeter of the targeted area and spiralling to the epicentre, as opposed to the conventional method of fogging which tend to chase mosquitoes," Ang said.
A Pesticides Board official said there over 300 pesticide companies registered the board and admitted that they are "many" illegal pesticides used.
She said in the fight against dengue, the firm involved have to inform the board about the works to be carried out, the pesticide registered with the board and the permit for the advertisement to inform the public on the fogging times.
Pest control companies without the necessary permits can be jailed six months and fined RM1,000 for the first offence under the Pesticides Act 1974. Subsequence offences will incur a year's jail, a fine of RM2,000 or both.
In 2007, the Subang Jaya Municipal Council (MPSJ) came under fire for trying to set up a consortium of pest controllers not registered with PCAM or the Pesticides Board. The then MPSJ president, Datuk Md. Arif Ab. Rahman, is today state financial officer while the general manager of the consortium, Othman Omar was recently appointed general manager of state-owned PKNS.
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