Locust swarms land in Muzaffargarh villages, city of Bahawalpur.

Byline: Malik Tahseen Raza and Majeed Gill

MUZAFFARGARH -- The farmers of Alipur and Shehr Sultan woke up on Friday to see their cotton crop under hovering thick, mobile, ravenous swarms of locusts. Though on Thursday a round of drizzle dipped temperatures but the congregation of locusts invaded the area from Bahawalpur with much ease.

According to agriculture officials, they have marked Kotla Lal Shah, Bair Band, Masoo Shah and Dumberwala areas as locusts infested but not locusts plagued as no damage to the crop was observed so far. Officials said the swarm was under resting stage due to rainfal at morning. As the wind is blowing, in such weather, the best treatment, as per officials, is drum beating and physically threatening to the bands to keep them from settling in fields. They say they will consider aerial as well as ground spray after examining the thermal behavior of the bands.

Additional Agriculture Director (Extension) Dr Shaukat Ali said they had made announcements in villages suggested farmers to repulse the attack by reciting Surah Rehman, Ayyatu Kursi and three times Darood Pak. He said thus was the first time when locust had visited Muzaffargarh. He said still the swarm was behaving like as guests as they were not damaging the crops. He said his vigilance teams had reported the swarm may fly towards Dera Ghazi Khan for its onwards journey to Balochistan and Iran. He said the swam could lay eggs on a daily basis.

BAHAWALPUR: The city and suburbs came under heavy attack of the locust on Friday.

This was the first-ever invasion of massive swarms of the locust of the city and its adjacent various rural areas having standing...

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