These grains (made of aluminum phosphide), which are usually circulated in Egyptian agricultural villages and governorates, pose a wide danger because of their quick deadly effect, with their presence naturally in farmers’ homes due to their use as an insecticide to preserve crops from decay, as they are used on large scales And easy to get.
The Egyptian Parliament entered the front line with the “killer pill”, by issuing recommendations in the middle of last year by the Agriculture Committee, including proposals to regulate its use and legalize its circulation, with tightening control over the shops that sell them, and the proposals were renewed after the recent suicide incident, which brought to the fore demands that the necessity of Effective action to address these incidents.
Parliamentary confrontation
Representative Mervat Abdel Azim told Sky News Arabia an incident of a confrontation with the Ministry of Agriculture under the dome of the Egyptian parliament, regarding the “toxic grain.”
The parliamentarian indicated that she had submitted two requests for briefing and a general discussion regarding these pills, which constitute a “disaster by all accounts”, due to their use as a means of suicide in many cases, the latest of which was the suicide of Basant (an Egyptian teenager from Gharbia governorate in the north of the country, who committed suicide after being subjected to electronic blackmail by people who published her inappropriate pictures).
A member of the Health Committee in the House of Representatives indicated that the parliamentary proposal that she submitted was calling for the establishment of legal controls to regulate the circulation of these pills, which are abused by young people and adolescents in villages in particular.
The proposals included “distributing grain tablets through the Directorate of Agriculture in each governorate in a specific number, and handing them over to the farmer in proportion to the size of the crop, provided that he sign a pledge acknowledging his prior legal and criminal responsibility for misuse,” while the Ministry of Agriculture responded to Parliament “in the form of It is completely unconvincing to us,” she said.
And the deputy added, “The Ministry of Agriculture responded in this regard that there is a law regulating the use and distribution of this type of grain, and there is a recommendation that is being worked on to reduce the use of tablets by 10 percent, especially in the regions, while denouncing the response on the grounds that the multiplicity of suicide incidents using these pills. The grain reflects the failure to apply those controls and limitations, and thus the persistence of the problem.”
Abdel Azim explains that “these pills cause many adolescents to die, some of them take them as suicide threats, but their toxic effect leads to death in a very large proportion.”
And she added that many of those who take it breathe their last even before reaching the hospital, noting that it is sold in shops and kiosks in villages and rural areas without controls, and “there is already a law regulating its sale, but it is not sufficiently implemented.”
These grains enter Egypt legally under the “preparations” item, and are used to combat stored grain pests, and there are no alternatives to their use, according to a previous report issued by the Pesticides Committee at the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, a report that referred to a package of precautionary measures taken since 2016 to prevent its circulation The public or trade in them except through specialized agencies, in addition to a strategy to gradually reduce the quantities consumed annually.
New briefing request
Recently, Representative Atef Maghawry submitted a request for a briefing to Parliament Speaker, Counselor Hanafi Jabali, warning of the dangers of the spread of “grain grains” and their illegal circulation and use by some teenagers.
The briefing request included the need to establish controls that would frame the use of pills legally, to prevent suicide incidents that occur using them.
Representative Hana Sorour had submitted a proposal last November, which includes some controls to legalize the circulation of these pills, stipulating “not to sell them to anyone except after registering his name and national number and the reason for buying them, as well as preventing them from being sold to young people or teenagers, with tightening control by the Ministry of Cultivation on the shops that sell this type of tablets, with continuous community awareness of the danger of eating toxic yield tablets.
And she stated in a statement that “in the event of disbursing these grains to the farmer, it must be through its legitimate source, which is the agricultural associations, in the agricultural tenure and with an approved invoice, and its disbursement is recorded in special books with specifying the amount of exchange and who spent it, until the application of the smart card system instead of the agricultural holding paper, in addition to linking the grain exchange to the farmer’s smart card in order to tightly control its circulation.
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