Agriculture dept’s interim report on measures against locust attacks fails to satisfy SHC

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Thursday expressed its dissatisfaction over the agriculture department’s report with regard to efforts being taken to combat locust attacks in the province and directed the Sindh government to file a comprehensive report with details of funds being spent to curb the pest attacks.

The direction came on a contempt application against the national food security and research secretary, Sindh chief secretary and others for not complying with the court directives to take all the best possible measures against the locust attacks in the province.

The applicant, Syed Mureed Ali Shah, submitted in the application that the SHC on December 19, 2019, had directed the agriculture department to ensure that all the best possible combat measures would be taken against the locust attacks in the province.

He submitted that he had filed a petition seeking aerial and ground spray operations to kill locusts in the agricultural areas of the province. He informed the SHC that the first generation of locusts in Balochistan could not be controlled by the federal and provincial governments and now the second and third generations had invaded several districts of the province and caused extensive damage to crops.

He submitted that the locusts had now entered heavily cultivated areas where they were eating crops, including wheat, vegetables, sugar cane and crops grown for fodder of livestock animals, but the federal and provincial authorities had failed to carry out spray to kill the locusts.

The petitioner maintained that Sindh was second most important province for cotton and wheat production after Punjab and due to large scale infestation of locusts in the province, the farmers in Sindh feared that the pests would destroy their crop fields.

He submitted that the federal and provincial governments were directed to carry out ground and aerial spray to kill the locusts without any further delay to protect the growers’ livelihood. However, no efforts were being taken to protect the crops from locusts.

He requested the high court to take action against alleged contemnors for violating the court orders.

The focal person of the agriculture department filed an interim report mentioning that 7,183,917 hectares of land in 22 districts of the province had been surveyed and till date spray had been carried out at 34,496 hectares.

A division bench of the SHC headed by Justice Omar Sial expressed dissatisfaction over the report, observing that the focal person was unable to answer the court’s questions on the report.

The high court observed that substantial amount had been released by the provincial government for combating the locust attacks but the report was vague about how that amount had been utilised.

The SHC directed a provincial law officer to submit a comprehensive report by June 16, which should reflect details of funds spent on such exercises as well as the names of landlords whose land had been covered in the spray drive.

It is pertinent to mention that the agriculture secretary had filed comments on December 19 last year with regard to the progress in spray operation against locusts. He had submitted that the affected areas included Sukkur (Saleh pat desert), Ghotki desert, Khairpur Nara desert, Tharparkar, Umerkot, Sanghar (Achro Thar desert), Shaheed Benazirabad, Naushero Feroz, Shikarpur, Mirpurkhas, Larkana and Badin.

He had submitted that spray had been conducted on 6,546 acres of land and 57 teams of the agriculture extension Sindh were working in all the locust-affected districts. The SHC was informed that the chief secretary had constituted an implementation committee on July 24, 2019, to implement precautionary measures against the locust attacks in the province.