Published on November 9 at 14:57, this formal response comes from two members of Suriname’s National Assembly — Cheryl Dijksteel, an opposition representative, and Ann Sadi, a coalition lawmaker — addressing a recent op-ed by Ruben Goncalves titled *Why the Pesticide Management Act Matters More Than Notifications*. The pair emphasize that food safety is a non-partisan public priority, noting that the 2020 NIVS (National Institute for Food Safety) Act was drafted by cross-party legislators and passed with unanimous parliamentary support, a marker of shared commitment across political divides.
Pushing back against Goncalves’ criticism that parliamentarians are staging “political shows”, rubber-stamping legislation blindly, and collecting inflated public salaries, the two lawmakers note that compensation for elected representatives is ultimately judged by Suriname’s voting public. They stress that tabling questions about rejected agricultural shipments is not performative: it is a core constitutional oversight duty of the National Assembly, especially after the European Union rejected four separate consignments of Surinamese fresh produce in a six-month window, a pattern that demands clear accountability from the executive branch.
The legislators express full support for Suriname’s farming and export communities, but push back against the assumption that high export volumes equal safe, compliant shipments. No centralized national data tracks what share of exported produce is formally tested for harmful pesticide residues, because Suriname does not run systematic, routine residue screening programs for harvested crops. Existing partial data paints a concerning picture: a 2017 Surinamese government study found that more than 20% of 99 Surinamese produce samples tested by Dutch regulators between 2011 and 2013 exceeded EU pesticide residue limits. In 2022, 102 samples collected directly from local export operators all tested positive for residues of agrochemicals that are formally banned in Suriname. While isolated residue exceedances do not automatically cause consumer illness, they mandate formal follow-up investigations. Under EU Regulation 2019/1793, repeated non-compliance reports can trigger intensified mandatory border checks for all Surinamese food imports, imposing extra costs and delays that would harm every local exporter across the board.
The pair also clarify the distinct, complementary roles of the pending Pesticide Management Act and existing food safety legislation. The proposed Pesticide Management Act regulates agrochemicals themselves: covering product registration, sales protocols, storage rules, a dedicated oversight commission, and a dedicated operational fund. Under Articles 7 and 8 of the draft law, authorized inspectors are only permitted to collect samples of unapplied pesticide products, not harvested fruits and vegetables, and the text does not set formal residue limits for food items. That specific mandate is explicitly assigned to the NIVS under the 2020 NIVS Act, Article 5, which tasks the institute with establishing formal maximum residue limits for food products.
Lawmakers point out that the executive branch already holds robust enforcement powers under existing legislation, but has failed to deploy them. The 2020 Plant Protection Act requires all local producers and exporters to register their operations, and mandates that exporters implement full traceability systems for their shipments (Article 25). The national plant protection service is legally required to open formal investigations into every non-conformity notification, and can impose escalating sanctions on operators with repeated violations (Article 39). To date, no formal origin tracing, product recall, or public safety alert has been issued following the two EU shipment rejections in April and May of this year, according to publicly available records.
Addressing claims that private sector representatives hold undue sway over the NIVS Supervisory Board, the two legislators lay out formal guardrails that keep full executive control in government hands: while private sector representatives may fill up to five of the nine board seats, the board chair is permanently the director of Suriname’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries (LVV). The minister has full authority to appoint and dismiss all board members, and private sector board representatives can only take office after formal approval from the Council of Ministers. The institute’s day-to-day operations are managed by a director appointed directly by the national president, all binding operational rules are enacted via formal state decree, the minister approves the institute’s annual financial statements, and holds final authority over all appeal cases. The NIVS is also legally required to align all its risk assessment protocols with the international Codex Alimentarius food safety standards, and operate under formal mandates for full transparency and impartiality, eliminating any conflict of interest where regulated parties could oversee their own compliance checks.
The legislators add that the NIVS is designed to consolidate fragmented food safety oversight that is currently scattered across multiple separate government agencies, a reform that parliament unanimously approved in 2020. Plant health regulatory functions remain with the national NPPO (National Plant Protection Organization), except for activities that directly impact food safety per Article 5 of the NIVS Act, and existing standards set by Suriname’s Standardization Institute (SSB) remain formal guiding rules. This single, unified point of contact for food safety oversight is a key formal requirement that all of Suriname’s major international trade partners have requested to streamline cross-border agricultural trade.
In closing, Dijksteel and Sadi note that they share the exact same core goal as Goncalves: safe, contaminant-free food for every Suriname resident, a resilient and competitive agricultural export sector, and an executive branch that fully enforces all laws that the National Assembly has passed. They argue that the core challenge is not a lack of existing legislation, but a total failure to implement rules that are already on the books. The two lawmakers will formally demand that the executive branch table a concrete, actionable implementation plan to resolve the ongoing food safety crisis before the National Assembly, and confirm they are ready to fast-track debate and passage of the pending Pesticide Management Act, on the condition that the government demonstrates equal urgency to enforce all existing food safety rules. They conclude that four EU shipment rejections in six months are more than sufficient warning, and no fifth rejection can be permitted to happen.