A week long training was conducted in Nuku’alofa which aimed at training the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, Forests and Fisheries staff in filling Tonga’s Pesticide file.
The training would assist the data to be uploaded onto the FAO Pesticide Stock Management System (PSMS).
Running from August 7th until August 11th 2017, the participants were trained in two areas, the filling of Tonga’s Pesticide File and the FAO Pesticide Registration Toolkit.
PSMS is an application that has been developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to be used by countries to record and monitor their inventories of pesticides and their usage.
Facilitator from the Pacific Community (SPC), Plant Health Technical Assistant Ms Renuma Kumar from the Land Resources Division said the purpose of this training was to help staff of MAFFF to populate Tonga’s PSMS file and familiarize themselves with the various functions of the pesticide toolkit.
“I am currently assisting the Pesticide Registrar of Tonga in filling Tonga’s PSMS File. PSMS is a regional online pesticide database, where all the countries in the Pacific have their own part in it, where they can fill and update all pesticides that has been imported to their countries,” she said.
Ms. Kumar noted that Pacific Island Countries will benefit from this as it aims to help reduce the creation of obsolete pesticides and enable countries to formulate more effective strategies to contain pest outbreaks.
Agricultural Officer from MAFFF Mr. Tu’usolo Tonga added that the Ministry is responsible for the registration of imported agricultural chemicals.
He further added that Tonga’s system is not up-to-date in relation to the introduction of new pesticides requirements.
The second part of the training was on the FAO Pesticide Registration Toolkit which serves as a guidance for pesticide registrars in decision making.
It also provides guidance about key registration procedures and methods in an interactive manner and creates a basis for training and capacity building of pesticide registration authorities in Tonga.
Similar training has been conducted in Samoa and Cook Islands.
Tonga is the fourth country in the Pacific to have its pesticide file being completed for upload on to the PSMS.
The database was created by FAO under the Capacity Building related to Multilateral Environmental Agreements in ACP Countries – Phase 2 (MEAs 2), with series of workshop conducted to introduce everyone to the system.
Photo supplied by Ministry of Information and Communication of Tonga