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Friday March 29, 2024

Sindh govt spent Rs696m on anti-locust sprays: CM Murad Ali Shah

By Our Correspondent
March 07, 2020

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, participating in Prime Minister Imran Khan’s meeting on locust swarm attacks via video link from the CM House on Friday, said his government had spent Rs 696.19 million to counter the locust attacks but the threat was so serious that there was a dire need to devise a National Action Plan to control the situation.

The prime minister held the meeting in Islamabad to control locust swarm attacks with the chief ministers of all the provinces, including Sindh Chief Minister Shah, who participated in the meeting from CM House through video link.

The chief minister was assisted by his agriculture minister Ismail Rahu, Chief Secretary Mumtaz Shah, PSCM Sajid Jamal Abro, Secretary Finance Hassan Naqvi, Secretary Agriculture Raheem Soomro, Secretary Food Laiq Ahmed and others.

He said that the breeding season of locusts, which have settled in the deserts of Thar and Nara, would start in July and last December, and during the same period they would breed in Cholistan of Punjab.

Shah told the prime minister that desert locust swarms were reported in the Nara Desert on May 31, 2019 and he had approached the federal government for initiating ground and aerial sprays. He added that the federal Plant Protection initiated a ground operation on June 3, 2019.

He said that the federal Plant Protection department had aircraft, but they had no funds to purchase fuel for doing aerial sprays in the desert area of Sindh; therefore, he gave them a grant of Rs10 million.

He added that the Sindh government had also released Rs335.095 million to the provincial agriculture department to purchase vehicles, spray machines, pesticides, POL and support to field staff. “Out of Rs335.095 million, Rs209.746 million have been utilised so far,” he said. Shah also said that Rs16 million had also been released to the deputy commissioners of five districts of Ghotki, Sanghar, Tharparkar, Umerkot and Khairpur.

He said that 57 teams of Agriculture Extension with 200 field staff equipped with 25 vehicles were working in the field to control the locust swarms. He added that 300 solo power sprayers and 10,000 hand-held sprayers had been provided to the field staff. He also told the prime minister that 100,000 litres of Lambda Cyhalothrin 2.5 EC had been purchased, out of which 75,000 litres had been supplied to the districts and 25,000 litres were available for emergency.

Talking about losses caused by the locust swarm attacks, the chief minister said that 168,701 acres of cropping area had been affected, and some 997,260 acres of desert area had also been affected by locusts, while 636,996 acres of desert area had been sprayed by the federal Plant Protection Department and the Sindh Agriculture Extension Department. He said that 46,015 acres had been sprayed aerially.