The prime minister's office (PMO) has ordered the authorities concerned to produce progress report on what so far has been done to push through government's battle against alleged food adulteration on a wider scale, officials said.
The PMO has taken adulteration issue seriously in recent times following contamination of food items, ranging from fish to fruit, with harmful chemicals, they said.
Following the PMO intervention, a number of raids by the law- enforcing agencies were conducted at the key kitchen markets and wholesale markets across the country.
However, now the PMO wants to know the real progress in the drive, especially in stopping the rampant use of formalin.
It asked the authorities, mainly the Ministry of Commerce (MoC) and the National Board of Revenue (NBR), to report the latest developments in plugging all potential conduits for entry of formalin, chlorine and other harmful chemicals.
A letter signed by senior secretary Abul Kalam Azad of the PMO called for the progress report as to whether the authorities could eliminate the hazards or not within October 27.
To make a follow-up on regular basis, the letter also asked them to make a report containing the real picture in relation to the anti- adulteration activities in the first week of each month.
Earlier, the PMO had sat with all concerned to launch the combat against the heinous act like adulteration of the stuffs marketed for human consumption.
A first work-plan meeting on controlling food adulteration took a good number of decisions last June.
The meeting had decided to slap restrictions on wide-scale import of formalin under different names.
It decided to prepare a list of formalin importers to check its abuses.
The meeting also decided to launch campaigns against the formalin menace in the fruit-producing belts like Rajshahi and Dinajpur.
"Import and use of the formalin must be monitored by the authorities concerned strictly," it was stated in one decision.
Strict monitoring at the border points was also ordered to stop the smuggling of formalin into the country. The BGB has been assigned to the task.
The activities of the government authorities concerned for restraining food adulteration across the country are apparently very slow.
"The government should be active seriously for the sake of human health," said an executive of the Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB).
Rights groups also cited higher court orders with regard to effective action for checking food adulteration.
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