- Need for cooperation
While still engaged in the ongoing war against covid-19, Pakistan has been told to be ready to face a second and unprecedented attack by locusts. In June last year locusts had entered Sindh after playing havoc in Balochistan as no aerial and ground spray had been carried out to exterminate the crop guzzlers. Within months they entered South Punjab and by the year’s end they had reached Dera Ismail Khan, leading the KPK government to declare an emergency in the province’s nine southern districts. This was followed by the federal government also proclaiming an emergency.
The locusts would reportedly attack this year in late June and early July. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned that the intensity of the locust attack would be more severe than it was in the same months last year and would cause a loss of Rs 600 billion to Pakistan’s economy. What is more, it would bring hundreds of thousands of farmers and their families to the brink of disaster. The situation is highly serious according to the Iranian ambassador to Pakistan who estimates that this could be the worst locust attack in 50 years. Meanwhile both CM Sindh Murad Ali Shah and PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari have expressed concern over the lack of help from the federal government. What the province needs are chemicals and flying machines for aerial sprays to protect the crops against the locust swarms. In case the locusts are not destroyed in Sindh, their entry point to the rest of the country, they would spread all over Pakistan. Will the federal government again wait till the locust wave has reached the farthest corners of the country?
Time is of utmost importance. Fighting the locusts is as important as the ongoing attempts to revive the economy. The locust attack is expected at a time when the cotton crop would be maturing and if they last till spring next year, the wheat crop too would be under threat. Political rivalries and point securing need to be forgotten till the country has got rid of the double whammy of the covid-19 and locust plagues. If Pakistan and India can meet to exchange notes on crop-killing insects during the height of their confrontations, why can’t the Centre and Sindh join hands to fight the locusts?
