New swarms of locusts from Iran could enter Sindh by May 15

KARACHI: New swarms of locusts from Iran could enter in Sindh by May 15 this year, a high level meeting of the provincial government was informed in a briefing, ARY News reported on Saturday.

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 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 Organisation (FAO) in 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.

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, report added.