Govt releases Rs1b as locusts emergency declared in Punjab

MULTAN: The Punjab government has declared locusts’ emergency in the province and released Rs 1 billion as to combat the pest invasion in all districts of the province.

It was said by Punjab Minister for Agriculture Malik Noman Ahmed Langrial while addressing a press conference here on Saturday. The Punjab minister said that Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar had allocated his helicopter for continuous and strict monitoring of locusts attack. The Punjab Disaster Management Authority had made a foolproof locusts’ prevention plan and set up control rooms in all districts and divisional levels, he told. The minister said that 24 districts had been affected by locusts’ attack in the province from last July till now.

The effective campaign and monitoring of locusts had been done at 10.4 million acres of agricultural lands in the province, he said. The anti-locusts squads were equipped with most modern equipment and machinery and the teams had conducted spray at 756,000,000 acres of lands and sprayed more than 75,000 litres pesticides in the province, he disclosed. The locusts were the second biggest natural calamity and the Punjab Agriculture Department had been fully engaged in the whole campaign, he told.

The minister said that the Punjab government had devised a strategy to prevent locusts’ summer breeding and completed all arrangements for aerial spray. The teams of the Punjab Agriculture Department, the PDMA, the Pak Army and the administration in respective districts and officials were fully engaged in locusts’ surveillance and control in the province, he said. The minister warned that massive swarms of locusts were entering from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the south Punjab via Layyah, Bhakkar, Mianwali, Khushab and Jhang districts.

The big swarms had also entered in the south Punjab from Balochistan areas of Dera Bugti, Rukhni and Barkhan in Rajanpur and Dera Ghazi Khan, he added. Now the swarms of locusts were moving ahead of Cholistan and Rajasthan from Khanewal, Muzaffargarh, Multan, Lodhran, Vehari, Rajanpur, Rahimyar Khan, Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar and Dera Ghazi Khan, he continued.

All the teams were ready in Cholistan to prevent locusts summer breeding, he assured. The minister said that the Punjab had purchased locusts pesticides on urgent basis from the market and provided them to field teams while more than 3,000 workers of the Agriculture Department were engaged in the whole campaign. Punjab Agriculture Extension Director Shahzad Sabir, Pest Warning Director Dr Muhammad Aslam and others were also present.