Staff Reporter
Islamabad
Minister for Food Security Syed Fakhar Imam Thursday said the government has planned to spend Rs 20 billion in a year to tackle the threat of locust attacks. Speaking in the National Assembly, he said it was proposed for the budget that the federal government will spend Rs 9.7 billion and provincial governments will contribute Rs 10.2 billion to counter the locust.
He said according to a latest report, the locust was present in all the 33 districts of Balochistan. The locust had also attacked districts of Dera Ghazi Khan, Rajanpur, Khanewal and many others, he added. The teams on the ground were sent out at night to spray and destroy locust when it rested, he told. He said according to one day figures from Balochistan, ground operation against locust was carried out over 8500 hectares by teams and two helicopters were used for aerial spray of over 500 hectares.
The minister said new swarms of locust will enter Pakistan from Iran and Afghanistan in two weeks time. The government will also keep a close watch on the locust when it will come from four countries including Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti in the horn of Africa and enter Pakistan via Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Iran, he continued. He said the federal and provincial governments, district administration and farmers were coordinating to tackle the locust attacks.
The government was constantly working with Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and getting surveillance data from it on a daily basis. National Locust Control Center along with National Disaster Management Authority and district administrations were making effort to control the locust. About 8,000 army troops were deployed for the anti-locust operation.
National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has said that to control locust swarm, countrywide survey and spray operations were underway. The NDMA spokesperson on Thursday said that survey of 353,000 hectares of area was carried out while 11,300 hectares were sprayed across the country during the last twenty-four hours.
He said 9100 hectares in Balochistan, 1100 hectares in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 1100 hectares in Sindh were sprayed during the last twenty-four hours. Over 578,000 hectares of area has so far been sprayed across the country, the NDMA spokesperson added. He said the crop munching bug exists in 50 districts of the country, including 33 districts in Balochistan, 11 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 6 in Sindh.
