Govt fully determined to eradicate locusts: food minister

Fakhar Imam says all necessary equipment provided to depts for protection of agricultural lands

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for National Food Security Syed Fakhar Imam on Sunday said that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led government was fully determined to eradicate locusts from the country.

Talking to a private news channel, the federal minister said that Prime Minister Imran Khan was making all-out efforts to address the challenges of the economy, virus pandemic, and locusts attack on crops in Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa areas.

“All necessary equipment including plane, aircraft and pesticides for spray on crops have been provided to the department concerned for protection of agricultural lands from locusts’ attack.

“We have five helicopters, planes, and aircraft to spray besides other essential items for saving cash crops from locust threat.”

Imam said that the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Plant Protection institution, ministry and the National Locusts Control Centre were working day and night to avoid widespread damages from locusts that “might have entered into this region from Africa”.

To a question, he said there was a dire need to invest in agro economy projects so that speedy results could be achieved in near future.

According to the NDMA spokesperson, the NDMA has so far cleared locusts from over 524,500 hectares of land during the ongoing operation in vulnerable districts of the country.

“Some 1,122 teams have been executing the surveillance and anti-locust spray operation in the country’s locust-hit districts,” the spokesperson added.

The survey of over 355,000 hectares of land and spray of over 4,230 hectare of areas had been carried out in the last 24 hours.

In Balochistan, anti-locust spraying was carried out on over 3,500 hectares of land.

In Punjab, over 30 hectares of land had been sprayed upon while the treatment of over 600 hectares of land has been carried out in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Likewise, 100 hectares of land had been cleared from locusts in Sindh.

The spokesperson said that a total of 46 districts, 33 in Balochistan, nine in K-P, one in Punjab and three of Sindh, had been hit by the locust swarms.

Notably, locusts were spotted in Khuzdar, Awaran, Naushki, Chaghi, Gwadar, Athal, Ketch, Panjgur, Kharan, Vishok, Quetta and other districts of Balochistan.

Several districts of K-P, including Dera Ismael Khan, Tank, North and South Waziristan, Lakki Marwat, Karak, Kurram, Nowshera and Khyber were affected with locust attacks.

In Punjab, the locust-hit areas included Mianwali. Likewise, the affected areas of Sindh included, Matyari, Jamshoro and Hyderabad.