Eight months into locust plague, govt says it has control strategy now

In this file photo, Pakistani children try to avoid locusts swarming in Rahimyar Khan on Nov. 13, 2019. (AP)

• The government wants to purchase new aircraft for aerial control
• Farmers in Sindh say the plague deprived them of crops and livelihood

KARACHI: Amid a blame game between the national and provincial governments over current locust outbreaks across the country, a national action plan to fight the invasion was announced on Thursday by the Ministry of National Food Security and Research.
Dismissing allegations by Sindh province that the federal government’s measures to address the plague were insufficient, Muhammad Tariq Khan, the ministry’s Department of Plant Protection (DPP) director, said the national plan “was devised in a meeting on Thursday, which was attended by representatives from all provinces and the center.”
In May, the swarming short-horned grasshoppers were spotted in the Nara desert, prompting DPP to apply insecticides. But some of the insects survived and started to breed out of control, spreading to Thar and Kohistan. In December, another locust attack destroyed wheat and vegetable crops in the province.
Speaking to Arab News on Wednesday, Ismail Rahoo, Sindh’s minister of agriculture, said the DPP had conducted a 10-day aerial application of pesticides in June on an area of 6,000 acres only. “There should be a large scale operation against locusts,” he said, urging the federal government to declare it as a natural calamity and “provide all resources as this is a huge threat to the agricultural economy.”
The federal government says it is fighting the menace.
“We have conducted aerial application of pesticides as and when required,” Khan told Arab News on Thursday. As proof that operations are underway, he cited an accident in which a “pilot and other staff were killed in a crash of the DPP’s aircraft near Sadiqabad earlier this month.”
He said the national anti-locust plan will have three stages, which will run through June 2021. He added that the government is exploring mechanisms to purchase new aircraft for aerial control. It will also allocate sufficient funds for pesticides and fuel. 
Meanwhile, amid cross-government blame games, farmers say they cannot do anything but watch their crops disappearing.
“In the December attack, the locusts damaged our wheat and vegetable crops. They couldn’t hurt sugarcane as it was already ripe. But when it gets warmer, they will destroy whatever little is left,” Shahbaz Rajpar, a grower in the Faizganj area of Sindh told Arab News on Wednesday. 
He added that his field was not only the source of his income but also of nearly 150 people working on his 300-acre land. “This will impact over 8,000 people in my village only,” he said.
Nisar Khaskhely of the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture on Wednesday shared a video on Twitter of a fresh locust attack on his crops. He said the swarm was 10 kilometers in size.
“This is frightening. We have serious food security concerns as there seems no check at the place,” Khaskhely told Arab News and added. “There is an idiom that ‘a stitch in time saves nine.’ Here, it seems the authorities may take the situation to a level beyond nine stitches.”