ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Friday asked the federal government to immediately implement the National Action Plan (NAP) formulated to control the locust attack in the country.
Also, the National Command and Operations Center (NCOC) underlined the need for creating a dedicated forum to effectively combat the imminent threat of locust through strong inter-provincial coordination.
In a statement, the PPP chief pointed out that swarms of locust had entered Kashmore, Larkana, as well as Umerkot and Thar. He warned that locust had moved fertile breeding ground in the desert in India before heading back to Sindh and Punjab and even might spread to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
“Any delay in the implementation of NAP decided at a meeting between the federal and Sindh government would mount grave danger to the agriculture as well as the overall economy,” said the PPP chairman.
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The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has already warned that locust attack can inflict losses to the tune of Rs600 billion to Pakistani economy if the government failed to take timely and full-fledged action.
Bilawal mentioned that a meeting between the federal and the Sindh governments had decided that under NAP at least 12 planes would be hired for aerial spray in the Balochistan – the entry point of locust swarms.
