ISLAMABAD: Minister for National Food Security and Research Syed Fakhr Imam said on Thursday that there was a remarkable reduction in locust swarms and that the locust situation in the country was under control.

He told a delegation of the Sindh Assembly’s members, who met him in Islamabad to discuss the locust situation in Sindh, that locust swarms had been controlled by an intensive operation conducted by the government.

Mr Imam informed the MPAs that the uplift of agriculture was the top priority of the present government. Sindh is rich in agriculture and there is a great need for improvement in the seed technology in order to harness the potential available in the province.

The Sindh MPAs who met Mr Imam were Firdous Shamim Naqvi, Leader of the Opposition in the Sindh Assembly, M. Shiraz Ali, Sidra Imran, Sanjay Gangwani, Raja Azhar and Shahzad Qureshi.

Meanwhile, the National Locust Control Centre has announced that no locust swarm has been reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Punjab. Locusts are now present only in Balochistan’s Lasbela district where an anti-locust survey and control operations are in progress. During the last 24 hours a locust control operation has been carried out in 40-hectare area of Lasbela district.

Published in Dawn, September 25th, 2020