Workshops in Ishwardi in Pabna and villages along the nearby border are accused of making jaggery (gur) without any cane juice, using harmful chemicals and fabric dye. Krishi Shomoy's Pabna correspondent reports that more than fifty such workshops have sprung up there and are turning out hundreds of tonnes ahead of winter and Ramadan, which then travel through wholesale markets across the country.
The report says the same practice runs in the winter season in Lalpur upazila of Natore (Mominpur, Maharajpur and Bilmaria unions, Kachua, Durduria and Balitita Islampur) and in Rajshahi's Bagha and Arani municipalities, Bajubagha and Gorgori unions, Monigram, Barkhadia and Amodpur. The local administration is struggling to keep up.
Ishwardi upazila health officer Md Shovon Pal said that regularly eating jaggery mixed with hydros, saccharin, lime and alum can cause gastric problems, ulcers and serious kidney complications.
Md Mahmud Hasan Roni, assistant director of the Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection in Pabna, said raids against adulterated jaggery are continuing. Raiding the workshops alone is not enough, he said; the wholesale depots and transport routes that spread the product must also be traced.
Mohammad Farid Hossain Bhuiyan, managing director of North Bengal Sugar Mills Ltd, said molasses carries harmful impurities such as sulphur and phosphorus. He said traders in the mill's cane zone were defying a government ban by crushing cane in their own crushers to make jaggery, and that chemical fumes from the workshops pollute the area. On 6 October the mill ran a drive at Gouripur in Lalpur, seizing crusher-made jaggery and equipment and imposing fines.
Ishwardi's assistant commissioner (land) and executive magistrate Md Asaduzzaman Sarker said the administration has zero tolerance for such illegal work, that mobile courts act as soon as specific complaints arrive, and that the drives will continue.
Photo: Masum-al-hasan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Krishi Shomoy
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