South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Awan Achiek
The Desert Locust Control Organization for Eastern Africa (DLCO-EA) in partnership with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have secured spray aircraft that will be deployed to spray Quelea birds that are eating crops in Upper Nile State and Ruweng Administrative Area.
Josephine Lagu, Minister of Agriculture and Food Security said on Monday after the arrival of the spray aircraft at Juba International Airport that the spraying to be conducted for a period of one month will start on the 29th of October in a bid to save farmers crops in the affected areas.
“The spraying of the Quelea birds will control damage and ensure food security continues in the affected areas, so that our people do not suffer loss of their crops after working very hard in cultivating the crops,” she said during a briefing to journalists.
Mwesigwa Moses Rwaheru, Director of DLCO-EA said that they have recently deployed technical staff of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security to oversee the work.
“These are the people who are going to be on the ground and able to train others on how to do early surveillance, early warning and also early action so that we can avoid most of these (crop) losses,” Rwaheru said.
He disclosed the Quelea birds which fly in millions can destroy over 10 grams of food per day.
Meshak Malo, the FAO Country Representative in South Sudan, said the aircraft was deployed based on the request of the government to strengthen the country’s response to the invasion of Quelea birds.
“We are going to have this operation here for one month, and we believe within one month the crops that are at stake will have finished, they are no longer at milking stage,” Malo said.
Malo revealed that the aircraft was purchased by FAO to support the East African member states to control spray of desert locusts and birds.
He added that FAO will finance the operational cost of the pilots for duration of one month.
Quelea is a genus of small passerine birds that belongs to the weaver family Ploceidae, confined to Africa. These are small-sized, sparrow- or finch-like gregarious birds, with bills adapted to eating seeds. Queleas may be nomadic over vast ranges; the red-billed quelea is said to be the most numerous bird species in the world.