Home » Breaking News » Forestry Commission cautions illegal loggers & truck owners

Forestry Commission cautions illegal loggers & truck owners

The Forestry Commission has cautioned illegal loggers and truck owners to desist from acts of illegalities as the commission is poised to arrest and prosecute them.

The warning   was given after the Commission’s Task Force recently confiscated 19 trucks loaded with illegal lumber.

Addressing the media in Accra, the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Commission,  Mr John Allotey said, “for  the  past two weeks we  have realized that those doing illegal logging have stepped up their game  so the  forestry commission under its Chief Executive Mr Kwadwo Owusu  Afriyie  tasked  the forest workers of  the Commission to mount special checks on trucks  that are carrying wood and within a short period of about a week, we have  arrested about 19 trucks all loaded with lumber some of them being chain sawn lumber, some of them carrying rose wood and  other  lumber in different shapes and forms.”

Mr Allotey added, “The message we want to send across is that the forestry commission is ready and it will arrest any and every truck that is loaded with illegal lumber.  We have asked our workers on the field to be vigilant.  We have sent message across that any lumber or log that they intend bringing on to the market illegally, they will be arrested.

“We  also send  message to the truck owners to also be careful not to rent their trucks to people who are involve  in that because  when  we  arrest the trucks, we are going to keep the impounded  lumber on the trucks and keep the trucks as well and so they should be very careful who they hire their trucks to.

The deputy CEO explained that chain sawn lumber has its own shape and how they process it and that some officers of the Commission have been specially trained to identify illegal lumber.  Additionally, he said, there are documentations which are supposed to come with the log   and therefore if the documentations are not correct, then it means they are illegally logged.

Regarding the impounded lumber, Mr Allotey told the press, “We are going to prosecute all the people involved. We are not going to sell the lumber. We will make sure whoever is involved, benefits from their own wrong.

 

By Mohammed Suleman

x

Check Also

It could take over 100 years for Ghana and other African countries to become ‘developed’ – Report

The latest African Economic Outlook released by the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) has detected ...