THE National Price Monitoring Committee (NPMC) was informed on Wednesday that almost 50 percent of vegetable ghee sold in the domestic market was not meeting the required health standards and was placed in the category of non-conformance. Around 44.4 percent of milk powder and 25 percent of loose milk were also found non-conforming, indicating that these products were not fit for human consumption.
The Nutrition Section of the Ministry of Planning deserves appreciation for highlighting a serious issue that directly affects the health of almost every citizen. It collected around 491 samples of Banaspati ghee, edible oils and milk products from locations prescribed by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) across all the provinces and analysed by the PCSIR. The province-wise findings showed significant variations, with 79.4 percent of Banaspati ghee samples in Balochistan, 63.3 per cent in Sindh, 58.3 per cent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 15.9 per cent in Punjab and 5.5 per cent in Islamabad Capital Territory failing to meet the prescribed standards. However, highlighting an issue is one thing and initiation of substantive measures to enforce quality standards is quite another thing. Apart from ghee and milk, surveys carried out to check quality of so-called packaged mineral water routinely expose claims made by the companies concerned about purity of the drinking water but these findings have never been followed up seriously or in a sustained manner. It is also regrettable that agencies and departments assigned the task of taking action against adulteration are often made targets of negative propaganda by vested interests and anti-adulteration campaigns are left midway. We hope that Planning Minister Prof. Ahsan Iqbal will coordinate with provinces and ensure formulation and initiation of a comprehensive and sustained campaign to ensure quality of these and other products, especially food items.
