SWABI: Farmers have to guard their maize crops throughout the night to protect them from the attacks of increasing number of pigs.

Talking to Dawn here on Monday, they said the pigs had been damaging maize fields during search for food at night. As the dark spreads, pigs start search for food in the fields and the grown maize crop is their target, they added.

The growers said it was during construction of Tarbela Dam in 1970s that foreigners brought pigs along with them, and since then their population has increased manifold.

“They were left in the Tarbela forest and now their number has reached to thousands,” Shad Khan, who retired as a watchman from Tarbela Dam, recalled.

Nur Gul, a farmer who has grown maize crop in front of the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, said last night he fired three shots, but couldn’t kill any pig prowling around his fields.

“Herds of pigs each night come to my agriculture fields in search of food,” he said.

Asif Khan, another farmer, said he had earlier planned to spread the barbed wire around the crop field and electrify it at night to thwart pigs, but he gave up the idea as any human might hit the live wire.

Published in Dawn August 18th, 2015

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