[www.inewsguyana.com] – The recent announcement by the Alliance For Change (AFC) that it will ban the export of logs if elected to government has received a blunt rejection by President Donald Ramotar.
Speaking at the annual Pork Knockers’ Day event in Bartica on Saturday (August 30), the President in response to AFC said, “if they come to government they will ban the export of timber, well the only way you can do that without affecting the livelihoods of small timber (logs) workers generally is to be able to add value to our timber products…It’s a total lie…the propaganda that we are destroying our forest”. I don’t know if they want us to eat the wood [logs] if we don’t export them, what we will do eat them?”
The promise to ban the export of logs was made by AFC Chairman, Nigel Hughes earlier in the week during a meeting in Region Nine.
President Ramotar in defense of the management of the forest sector hailed Guyana’s rate of deforestation as being one of the lowest in the world. He reminded the large gathering, including Amerindians loggers that Guyana’s extraction of timber was far below that of the allowable cut.
The country annually harvests only 30 percent of what it can cut under national and international logging standards.
Recently, the operations of Chinese Logging Company – Bai Shan Lin – came in for heavy criticisms, along with a number of accusations to the effect that the Guyanese people are being exploited.
The Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) also came under fire for not being strict with the Company.
