CAA suspends flights form Shaheed Benazirabad in view of locus swarms

SUKKUR: In view of the locust swarm, the Civil Aviation Authority suspended the air traffic at Shaheed Benazirabad Airport owig to threat to flight movements.

Meanwhile, a large swaps have entered Sindh from Iran via Balochistan, said Sirai Nisar Ahmed President Sindh Chamber of Agriculture. These locusts in milions, he said have landed in Larkana, Nara Desert area of Khairpur, Sukkur, Ghotki and begun devouring crops. Nisar Ahmad apprehended that the pests would destroy mango orchards besides devastating onion, tomato, ladyfinger, coriander and other crops.

Locust swarms were noticed to have attacked green pastures, trees and crops wreaking havoc with the agriculture economy and threatening food security. Following Larakana, the swarms have begun to descend farmlands in Naudero and surrounding areas, he said.

Sirai Nisar said the agriculturists and farmers of the affected areas are struggling hard to combat the locust invasion by sprinkling pesticides on their crops but their outreach is limited. The locusts, he said have ample breeding time in the kutcha area along the Indus embankments. But he feared as soon as the pests would attain flying age, they would start attacking crops available to them all around. The farming community do not have access to aerial spray and are to use \traditional methods to scare away the locust swarm which do not hold a big promise to push away the swarms but. Nisar asked the PDMA and the Sindh government to stop the blame game and focus on neutralising the breeding zone and the emerging swarms of locusts and asked the Sindh government to arrange light aircraft and pesticide to bring the situation under control and ward of agricultural damage and resultant fod scarcity. He has sought intervention of Prime Minister Imran Khan in controlling locust attacks in Sind, and added both “the crop protection department and National Disaster Management Authority have failed to take any appropriate action in this regard.”. He warned that without timely action the cotton crop and other vegetables in Sindh would be irreversibly destroyed like the last year, therefore the PM should initiate action to handle that alarming situation.

He said locust swarms re-entered in Sindh in Oct 2019, partially destroyed wheat, mustard and other vegetables. He said that an average swarm, which had up to 40 million insects, could travel up to 150km in a day to destroy enough food crop that otherwise could feed 34m people. The desperate farmer community are running from pillar to post to seek help for their subsistence agriculture but complaint nothing substantive has bee done.