Govt moves to make jute a must in packaging
Cabinet yesterday approved a draft bill seeking mandatory use of jute in packaging of various commodities.
"The bill will be placed in parliament soon for passage," prime minister's Press Secretary Abul Kalam Azad told reporters after the cabinet meeting held at Bangladesh Secretariat.
Once this draft bill is enacted as a law, all government and non-government organisations engaged in production and distribution of food, sugar and agricultural inputs like fertiliser, seed etc will have to use jute in packaging of their goods, said Jute and Textile Minister Abdul Latif Siddiqui yesterday afternoon.
He was replying to lawmakers' queries in parliament.
The cabinet's nod to the draft bill -- Compulsory usage of jute in packaging of all products 2010 -- came hard on the heels of breakthrough advancement in jute sector with Bangladeshi researchers successfully decoding the genome of the natural fibre.
Abdul Latif also said the government has implemented a project through jute directorate on how to grow more jute in less land and to achieve self-sufficiency in production of quality seeds.
Under the project covering 100 upazilas in 35 districts some 5,000 selected farmers were trained. The farmers were sent short message service (SMS) encouraging them to grow jute, the minister said. He said the government is assisting farmers to get agriculture loans.
The Jute Research Institute has also taken various measures to invent varieties of jute and different farm tools in the wake of changing climate. The research will be intensified in future, the minister said.
He said the jute ministry is working with the LGRD and communications ministry to manage water sources by highways so that farmers can have their jute plants rotten in those water bodies.
The minister told the parliament, decoding of jute genome would immensely prosper the sector. He thanked the premier and the agriculture minister for cooperating the team to decode the jute genome.
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