A meeting of the provincial administration, chaired by Chief Secretary of Sindh Mumtaz Ali Shah, discussed the locust situation in Sindh. “Around 60 countries across the world have been affected by the attacks of locusts’ swarms,” the meeting was briefed.
The government has established camps at 30 places and constituted 57 teams comprising of 180 people to tackle the threat, the meeting was informed.
The officials of the Sindh Agriculture Department and Plant Protection Department also included in these teams. The meeting also decided to arrange training of 250 employees of the agriculture department from the plant protection department to tackle the locust situation in Sindh.
In June last year, swarms of locusts attacked cotton fields in Khairpur, Sukkur, and Ghotki in Sindh. Farmers had to bear losses of hundreds of millions of rupees due to crop damage in the attack.
The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the first week of September 2019 had warned that the situation relating to locusts in Pakistan was “most serious” as a second generation of the insect had been bred.
In Pakistan breeding grounds have been discovered in areas of Balochistan, Sindh, and Punjab. FAO mentioned that they hope that Pakistan is taking the step to deal with this problem. The federal plant protection department has begun anti locust operation in Pakistan.
According to the FAO’s Locust Watch report, there remains a risk of further breeding, causing locust numbers to increase, with the possibility of swarm formation from late September onward. Yemen and India are also facing a similar situation, and the situation could deteriorate in Ethiopia and Eritrea, the report added. This locust attack can be a major threat to food security followed by economic devastation.