MUZAFFARGARH: The farmers of Alipur and Shehr Sultan woke up on Friday to see their cotton crop under hovering thick, mobile, ravenous swarms of locusts. Though on Thursday a round of drizzle dipped temperatures but the congregation of locusts invaded the area from Bahawalpur with much ease.

According to agriculture officials, they have marked Kotla Lal Shah, Bair Band, Masoo Shah and Dumberwala areas as locusts infested but not locusts plagued as no damage to the crop was observed so far. Officials said the swarm was under resting stage due to rainfal at morning. As the wind is blowing, in such weather, the best treatment, as per officials, is drum beating and physically threatening to the bands to keep them from settling in fields. They say they will consider aerial as well as ground spray after examining the thermal behavior of the bands.

Additional Agriculture Director (Extension) Dr Shaukat Ali said they had made announcements in villages suggested farmers to repulse the attack by reciting Surah Rehman, Ayyatu Kursi and three times Darood Pak. He said thus was the first time when locust had visited Muzaffargarh. He said still the swarm was behaving like as guests as they were not damaging the crops. He said his vigilance teams had reported the swarm may fly towards Dera Ghazi Khan for its onwards journey to Balochistan and Iran. He said the swam could lay eggs on a daily basis.

BAHAWALPUR: The city and suburbs came under heavy attack of the locust on Friday.

This was the first-ever invasion of massive swarms of the locust of the city and its adjacent various rural areas having standing crops and green trees worth millions of rupees in thousand s of acres.

The city and rural areas of villages 5, 6 and 10 BC on Hasilpur Road and parts of the city localities like Satellite Town and other housing colonies on Jhangiwali Road were under the attack. The people in large number and the residents of various colonies were surprised to see the swarms of the locusts, which hovered over the people’s heads and roof tops of the houses.

Agriculture (extension) Director Khalid Sindhu confirmed the first-ever attack of massive locust swarms on the thickly-populated areas of the city and its suburbs.

He reiterated his old stand that the swarms were on their way back to Lasbella (Balochistan) after the end of summer season and as such passed through the aerial route of the city. He claimed that locusts would not damage the crops if it settled down for a night in the cropped areas of Bahawalpur tehsil as the locusts only damaged the bushes in the desert areas.

He said the field teams may assess the locusts’ presence in the area in the sunlight and could be able to assess its damage ,if any when the sun would rose on Saturday.

He further claimed that in Cholistan desert the locust could only eat bushes and had been settled on sand dunes without moving to any green cultivated areas.

Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2019