Resh­ma Ra­goonath

In­tense spray­ing and de­fog­ging has be­gun in Chatham as the Food Pro­duc­tion Min­istry bat­tles swarms of lo­custs that have been rav­aging crops, fruit trees and veg­e­ta­tion in the area over the past few days.Yes­ter­day mem­bers of the new­ly-formed lo­cust erad­i­ca­tion unit of the min­istry were kept busy re­spond­ing to calls from farm­ers and res­i­dents as clouds of in­sects de­scend­ed on plants and trees.

Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj, speak­ing briefly with the T&T Guardian by phone yes­ter­day, said the in­fes­ta­tion is a "cause for con­cern."But he said the min­istry's south re­gion­al of­fice's in­tense cam­paign would yield re­sults and the lo­custs wreak­ing hav­oc in Chatham would be brought un­der con­trol."It must be a con­cern for us but this is a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter and the min­istry is em­bark­ing on the rec­om­mend­ed way to treat with lo­cust in­fes­ta­tion," he said.

While Chatham farm­ers have com­plained that the in­sects have dam­aged their food crops, Ma­haraj said he was yet to re­ceive for­mal claims or com­plaints."Since this in­ci­dent broke out I have not re­ceived a sin­gle let­ter, E-mail, Face­book mes­sage, a sin­gle text or any­thing from any farmer re­gard­ing a grasshop­per, much less a lo­cust." I have re­ceived a re­quest from Ren­tokill to im­port in­sects to serve on the prom­e­nade as a del­i­ca­cy faster than that," Ma­haraj said.

Yes­ter­day the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the af­fect­ed ar­eas and met with Chatham farmer Ram­nanan Seer­aj, 36, of Syfoo Trace, Granville, who said when he went to tend to his wa­ter­mel­ons around 9.30 am he spot­ted a swarm of lo­custs hov­er­ing over his crops in Bowen Trace.He said they start­ed to at­tack the corn and pi­men­to plants on his five-acre plot."The day be­fore they were not there. When I came this morn­ing I see a whole set at­tack­ing the corn. I have 12,000 corn trees and they start eat­ing them al­ready.

"I not sure how much loss­es I have but it will be in the thou­sands," Seer­aj said.Seer­aj said he was hap­py with the re­sponse from the lo­cust erad­i­ca­tion unit but ex­pressed con­cern that the chem­i­cals be­ing used for spray­ing the in­sects might ad­verse­ly af­fect his crops."I have to fright­en for my crops," he said. But erad­i­ca­tion unit of­fi­cials as­sured the chem­i­cals would not de­stroy crops.

While the T&T Guardian was in­ter­view­ing Seer­aj lo­custs were hov­er­ing above and a buzzing sound was au­di­ble. Lo­custs land­ed on cloth­ing and had to be slapped away while walk­ing through the forest­ed area to get to Seer­aj's crops.

Sit­u­a­tion 'near un­der con­trol'

An of­fi­cial from the erad­i­ca­tion unit yes­ter­day ex­plained that the lo­custs have been iden­ti­fied as Moru­ga lo­custs (a species found in Moru­ga) and are mi­grat­ing to Chatham in search of food. The of­fi­cial said the Food Pro­duc­tion out­reach cen­tre at Point Fortin and the Ce­dros sub-of­fice have teamed up to erad­i­cate the lo­custs but the in­sects were mov­ing north along the south­west­ern penin­su­la.But the of­fi­cial said the sit­u­a­tion was near 50 per cent un­der con­trol.