MITHI: Swarms of locusts have descended in desert area of Thar and attacked standing crops in the region, ARY News reported on Thursday.
Several swarms of locusts have entered in Thar from India and eat up crops in Chachro and Dahli areas, local people complained.
“Only spray of insecticides by an aircraft (in the area) could help to destroy the attacking swarms of locusts,” local MPA Abdul Razzaq Rahimoo has said.
“The teams of the provincial agriculture department could not eliminate these swarms of locusts,” he was of the view.
“I have contacted with Sindh Minister for Agriculture Mohammad Ismail Rahu and Deputy Commissioner Tharparkar (informing them about the locusts situation),” Rahimoo said.
Earlier in this month, locusts, a specie of grasshoppers, reportedly eat up crops, grass and shrubs in some villages of Nagarparkar and Islamkot talukas of Thar region.
Local villagers said the government officials had sprayed insecticides a few days ago, but the spray proved ineffective due to continuous rain in the areas.
They demanded of the highups to send teams with required machinery for killing insects.
In June this year, swarms of locusts attacked cotton fields in Khairpur, Sukkur, and Ghotki. Farmers had to bear losses of hundreds of thousands of rupees due to crop loss in the attack.
The crops were affected in Khairpur’s Naaro, Chondko, Thari Meerwah, Sukkur’s Saleh Pat, Thikrato, Mubarakpur and Ghotki’s Khanpur Mahar, and Khangarh.
The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in first week of September warned that the situation relating to locusts in Pakistan was “most serious” as a second generation of the insect had been bred.
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.
During August, adults continued to lay eggs primarily in Cholistan, and to a lesser extent, in Nara and Tharparkar deserts where groups of hoppers had formed near the Indian border, report said.
From mid-August onwards, hatching caused locust numbers to increase. Adults were also laying eggs and hoppers were forming groups in the Lasbela area west of Karachi. The update says that during the month of August, nearly 86,000 hectares were treated, out of which 16,455 hectares of land was treated in Pakistan.
Breeding will continue in Cholistan and Tharparkar deserts with another generation of hatching and the formation of hopper groups and perhaps a few small swarms forming by late September.
