Karamoja MPs attack government over late locust response

Members of Parliament and local leaders from Karamoja Sub-region have accused government of dragging its feet to combat locust invasion.

While addressing journalists at Parliament yesterday, a section of MPs led by Mr Samson Lokeris, the MP for Dodoth East County, said government anticipated the locust invasion two weeks ago but its reaction has been slow.

He said government did not have to wait for the locusts to arrive before they start acting, asserting that delayed response would be costly.

“There was an early warning and there is late response by the government. Some Uganda ministers have travelled to Kenya to negotiate for aircraft that can be used for aerial spray. What have they been doing all along? Our worry is why didn’t we prepare as soon as the alerts were made?” Mr Lokeris said.

“We also expected forces of trained personnel and chemicals to be used in spraying these locusts to have been assembled in the affected districts following the alerts, but it is shocking that the responsible ministries started airlifting and training them yesterday, this is absurd,” he added.

MPs also tasked government to come up with a special budget for the after-effects of the locusts that feed on both crops and livestock pastures.

They also asked government to ensure the chemicals they are going to use to spray the locusts do not have any effect on humans and animals.

Government yesterday airlifted 36,000 litres of chemicals and 2,000 manual pumps to Moroto District for locust spraying.

After weeks of speculation, the insects finally hit Ugandan side of the border in Amudat and have since spread to Moroto, Nabilatuk, Nakapiripirit, Napak, and Abim districts.

A district technical officer in Moroto, who did not want to be named over fear that he could be reprimanded, said both the Ministry of Agriculture and the Office of the Prime Minister have refused to engage the district leadership from Karamoja in planning how they can combat the invasion.

“If the team had timely involved and facilitated the district extension workers to respond to the locusts, the insects would have been curtailed from movement,” the official said.

He said many district officials are not aware of the training of personnel to help fight the insects.
“Government is saying we are training 2,000 people to fight the invasion, but we don’t know where they are training the people from,” the source said.
Ms Marry Angolere, a resident of Rupa Sub-county in Moroto, said they are worried they will die of hunger if nothing is done.

John Ngorok, another pastoralist, wondered what government has been doing all along even after getting information that the locusts were advancing from Kenya.
“We have been hearing over the radios that government had set billions of shillings to fight locusts but the response has been slow,” he said.

Mr Robert Adyama, the Amudat Resident District Commissioner (RDC), said the locusts are increasing every day and that by yesterday evening, more locusts were swarming the area.
“Some have remained in Kosike, Karita while others continued all their way to the side of Nabilatuk District,” he said.

Mr Peter Ken Lochap, the RDC of Moroto, said government through the OPM was organising for a training of about 2,000 people including the Army, Uganda Prisons officials, Uganda WildLife Authority, and other technical people on how to carry out the technical spray.

He appealed to the general public to calm down saying government will do everything to stop the destruction of crops and the environment.
“Government is not sleeping and it is taking a lot of action against the locusts so people should not panic,” he said.

Tackling the locusts
Remedy. With the locust swarms in the Horn of Africa and now East Africa, countries are scrambling to deal with them.

Containment of the outbreak depends on two major factors, monitoring and effective control.
The Desert Locust Information Service, run by the the Food Agricultural Organisation (FAO), provides forecasts, early warning and alerts on the timing, scale and location of invasions and breeding.

But once populations reach critical levels, such as in the Horn of Africa, urgent action needs to be taken to reduce locust populations, as well as preventing more swarms.

Although there is ongoing research into more environment-friendly solutions, such as biological pesticides or introducing natural predators, the most commonly used control method is pesticide spray.

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