'Conducive environment for locust creating threat of spread of swarms'

ISLAMABAD: The desert locust is currently present only in two districts of the country but threat of spread of swarms still exists as there is a conducive environment for the locust in the current month especially in the lower and eastern parts of Sindh province.

According to officials and experts, during the last 24 hours, no locusts have been reported in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh province.

However, presence of locust was reported from one district of Balochistan (Lasbella), and also one district of Punjab province (Rahim Yar Khan), they said.

They warned that extreme vigilance and surveillance was mandatory especially in the prone districts.

The locust had now migrated to India and it would again move towards Pakistan's bordering districts in mid of October for lying of eggs, if the neighboring country failed to control swarm, they said.

The official of the Ministry of National Food Security and Research said that anti-locust survey and control operations were in progress, and during the last 24 hours, 195,573 hectares area had been surveyed by joint teams of the Ministry of National Food Security and Research, provincial agriculture departments, and the Pakistan Army.

Locust control operation has been carried out on 380 hectares of district Lasbella of Balochistan and 60 hectares of Punjab in the last 24 hours, he said.

He said that during the last six months, control operations had been carried out on 1,128,239 hectares area of land in 62 districts of the country.

When asked about the damages caused by the locust across the country, he said the ministry had written letters to all the provincial governments to share data regarding exact damage caused by locust swarm in their respective province but so far, no province had shared data in that regard.

However, he said that mostly locust attacked non-crop areas as compared to crop areas in the country.

President Pakistan Kissan Ittehad (PIK) Khalid Mehmood Khokhar, while talking to Business Recorder, also said the outbreak of locust had been controlled in the country but he urged the government to make a comprehensive strategy for control of locust in the future.

About the damage caused by the swarms, he said locust had affected cotton crop in some parts of Punjab and Sindh in the beginning.

Locusts entered Pakistan for the first time in June last year - after they were last seen in the country in 1993 - infesting 62 districts in all four provinces of the country, forcing the government to declare a national emergency.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020