BAHAWALPUR: A national action plan is being made to completely eradicate locusts in across the country in the coming days.

This was stated by Punjab Secretary for Agriculture Wasif Khursheed at a meeting here on Tuesday.

According to a press release, he said with the implementation of the plan, the locusts could be wiped out completely in the future, saving the crops from it s damages.

The secretary claimed that in order to kill the locust swarms, over 7,2000 hectare acres of land in Cholistan had been sprayed with pesticides while about 300,000 acres had been under surveillance in the desert.

He said that during the previous months, the federal plant protection department and the provincial agriculture department during its campaign against the locusts had killed the swarms and saved the crops from damages. He paid homage to personnel an engineer and a pilot who laid down their lives while carrying on anti-locust spray in the desert near Sadiqabad on Sunday.

BOOKED: The Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) has registered a case against a contractor, Muhammad Sharif, of Sadiqabad for allegedly embezzling millions of rupees of the company.

SNGPL Bahawalpur Regional Manager Malik Bashir Ahmed told Dawn the company in 2017 had given a contract to Sharif`s company to lay 607km long Sui gas network in Chishtian. But, instead of laying pipelines network in the specified areas, the contractor laid down the network in other areas without the company`s approval.

On receiving information, the officials retrieved illegally laid down gas network. The contract was cancelled and the contractor was asked to deposit million of rupees with the company. The Chishtian police, on the complaint of Engineer Shehzad Imran, had registered a first information report (FIR) but no arrest was made yet. Correspondent