GUINEA-BISSAU: Libya sends pesticides and control teams to fight locusts

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

BISSAU, 25 Jan 2005 (IRIN) - Libya has flown 30 tonnes of insecticide and 12 vehicles equipped with spraying equipment to the small West African state of Guinea-Bissau to help the local authorities step up their fight against an invasion of locusts.

Two transport planes carrying the pesticide, the vehicles and 17 Libyan locust control experts arrived in the capital Bissau on Monday and Tuesday.

The Libyan control teams will join five others from neighbouring Senegal which arrived in the country overland last week.

Swarms of pink immature locusts invaded Guinea-Bissau from Senegal in December. Since then they have been causing heavy damage to local food crops. Fields of cassava, vegetable gardens and orange and mango trees in the north and east of the country have suffered particularly.

Government officials are extremely concerned that swarms of the voracious insects may cause heavy damage to country's cashew nut trees, which are currently in flower.

Cashew nuts provide the main source of cash for two thirds of Guinea-Bissau's peasant farmers and exports of cashew nuts are the country's main source of foreign exchange. The former Portuguese colony earned US$61 million from exporting 93,000 tonnes of cashew nuts last year.

Officials said the latest locust invasion had taken place in Oio district, northeast of the capital and control teams were currently being dispatched there.

Marcelino Martins, the government's Director General of Agriculture, told IRIN that he feared locusts would remain a serious problem in Guinea-Bissau for the next three years.

Portugal announced last week that it would give the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) US$331,000 to fund the present control operations in the poor country of 1.3 million people.

[ENDS]