The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations and the Ministry of National Food Security and Research (MNFS&R) on Saturday agreed to develop a roadmap for locust control in Pakistan. The decision to this effect was taken at a meeting between FAO Director General (DG) Qu Dongyu and Minister for National Food Security and Research Khusro Bakhtiar.

The ministry and the FAO signed a Technical Cooperation Project (TCP) Agreement for locust control. The FAO DG affirmed to consider provision of support to compliment the measures taken by the government for controlling locusts. "The locusts have caused a serious disaster in eastern parts of Africa," he said, adding the FAO was mobilizing its resources in collaboration with its development partners to cope with this emergency situation.

Dongyu said Pakistan and the FAO had a long history of collaboration, which might further be strengthened by developing new cooperation mechanism policy particularly for locust control. Bakhtiar informed the DG FAO that the government had declared a national emergency for controlling locusts.

"The FAO is an important development partner and it can provide assistance for surveillance of locust especially mapping out the situation intra-regional and regional situation," Bakhtiar said.

He said the government was likely to launch a massive operation for locust control shortly for which the Department of Plant Protection (DPP), the provincial governments and the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) would jointly be engaged. The minister said that technical support of the FAO would be extremely important to curb the menace of locust in an effective and timely manner.