THATTA, March 8: The district government has urged the authorities concerned to adopt precautionary measures to combat locust swarms which may attack the country, particularly Sindh and Balochistan, during the current and coming month.

District Nazim Shafqat Hussain Shah Shirazi told this correspondent that he had asked the ministry of food, agriculture and livestock to mobilize its plant protection department for conducting a survey on locust breeding in desert areas of the country. The survey should be followed by an aerial spray to eliminate locust, plant monitoring, sampling, grading and other protective measures, he added.

He claimed that after the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations had warned about the locust attack in Pakistan in last December, he had repeatedly requested the authorities concerned for preventive measures.

Mr Shirazi recalled that in 1960s and 70s , crop over 700,000 acres of land in Thatta had been devoured by locust in Thatta district alone. He said that in the tenure of the present government and particularly after devolution of power, Thatta had received huge funds and claimed that record development work costing over Rs2 billion had been carried out in the district.

However, its agriculture sector still required attention of the federal government, the nazim added. Elaborating, he said that hyper salinity, inundation of over 1.2 million acres by sea and water shortage had made it impossible for the farmers to pay loans of the Zarai Taraqqiati Bank, as a result the loan had kept on multiplying. He called for a relief package for the affected growers.

Recalling President Gen Pervez Musharraf 's address at a peasant conference in Islamabad a few months back in which he had promised special relief package for farmers of calamity-hit areas, Mr Shirazi appealed to him to waive off the principal amount of farm loan up to Rs500,000 with interest owed by Thatta farmers.