By STANSLOUS NGOSA in Choma – THE Zambia Environment Management Agency (ZEMA) and CropLife Zambia have embarked on a programme to train more than 300 agro-chemical dealers countrywide in chemical safety practices. This is aimed at guaranteeing the certification of their operations as per legal requirement. The intervention supported by Musika was aimed at equipping the dealers with the right information on safe handling practices for sustainable management of the environment. Musika corporate affairs manager Pamela Hamasaka said yesterday at the training of the dealers, that the training would assist rural agro-dealers to comply with the law on agro-chemical management and disposal. “We also want to develop confidence in their small-scale customers with the assurance that they are purchasing genuine products coupled with the right product information, Ms Hamasaka said. She said agro-dealers’ chemical safety capacity building would result in the development of database of certified dealers and enable the development of systems for ZEMA to police. This was against the backdrop of the proliferation of illegal dealers selling counterfeit products, which affected the environment and human beings. ZEMA senior inspector Christopher Kanema said the agency with its partners had since intensified training of agrochemical dealers to provide proper chemical safety. He said the presence of the illegal dealers was a concern, hence the intervention by ZEMA and its partners like CropLife Zambia and Musika. Mr Kanema said ZEMA wanted farmers and agro-chemical dealers to understand chemical safety issues for the betterment of sustainable environmental management.