Officials in Pakistan confirmed today, Friday, that the country has completely eliminated swarms of desert locusts, months after the declaration of a national emergency to combat the spread of locusts.
The head of the National Center for Locust Control, Lieutenant General Most Ijaz, said: “By the grace of God, and then with the efforts of everyone, we announce today that there are no locusts in Pakistan.”
“The locust swarms began to retreat since August, and we have cleared the last few hectares of land in two areas this week,” Ijaz said during a ceremony in the capital, Islamabad.
Pakistan has deployed drones, promoters, hundreds of vehicles and thousands of agricultural workers since declaring the state of emergency last February.
Swarms of locusts entered Pakistan for the first time in June of last year, from neighboring Iran, and quickly destroyed large areas of agricultural land in the southwestern regions, as they destroyed cotton, wheat, corn and other crops.
The damage pushed Pakistan, which has a population of 220 million, to fail to meet its target of its wheat production, whose harvest fell by two million tons, forcing the government to import wheat for the first time in nearly a decade.
The decline in revenues led to a rise in the prices of wheat and other food grains, which pushed general inflation to nearly 10% last September, and increased political pressure on the government.
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