Gujarat govt sends 116 teams to tackle locust attacks

Sharing details of measures taken by the state government to control the locust attacks, Additional Chief Secretary, Agriculture, P K Parmar stated that due to state government’s concerted efforts and the change in the wind direction, the insects are expected to move towards Balochistan province of Pakistan.

“Gujarat Agriculture Minister R C Faldu reached affected areas and with joint efforts of state and district administration, the teams took steps to control the attacks,” Parmar said at a press conference in Gandhinagar on Friday.

Accepting the demand of farmers to provide uninterrupted electricity supply during daytime, Parmar announced that the state government has already implemented the same in the affected areas. Based on the presence of insects in these areas, the control teams have been tracking the location and taking insect control measures, he said.

A total of 124 villages in four northern districts of Gujarat have been affected by the locust attacks. Among these, the worst affected are 114 villages under 13 talukas of Banaskantha district bordering Rajasthan, five villages under a taluka of Mehsana district, four villages of two talukas in Patan district and one village in Sabarkantha district.

In Banaskantha district, till Thursday, a total of 3,526 hectare area has been locust-controlled by as many as 27 survey teams of the state government’s Agriculture Department. The state government claimed that on December 25 and 26, with the help of 19 locust control team of the Central government and 25 tractor mounted sprayers, 25 per cent insects had been killed. Of the remaining insects, some have gone towards Rajasthan while the remaining were spotted in Vaghasan and Miyal villages in Tharad taluka and neighbouring villages spread across 3,000 hectare.

The state government’s tracking teams communicate the location where the insects settle at night, so that the locust control teams from the Central government can spray insecticide early morning in an effective manner.

While farmers have being ruing about huge damage to their crops, the state government claims to have controlled locust attack in the state.