PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has failed to dispose of 0.55 million cubic feet (cft) legally harvested timber of dry wind fallen trees worth approximately Rs3.8 billion during the last 16 years, according to sources.
Officials of forest department and locals told Dawn that under Dry Wind Fall Policy, 2003, around 4.5 million cft wind fallen trees were harvested in Lower and Upper Kohistan from 2008 to 2010.
They said that 3.15 million cft timber was harvested in Upper Kohistan out of which 2.78 million cft was disposed of in 2010, while the remaining 0.35 million couldn’t be sold after the timeframe of the policy expired.
Similarly, they said, 1.34 million cft dry wind fallen trees were harvested in Lower Kohistan under the same policy out of which 1.1 million cft timber was sold while the remaining 0.204 million cft awaited sale.
The timber worth Rs3.8 billion has been dumped in Lower and Upper Kohistan
“The harvested precious timber is lying on Karakuram Highway, other roads in both Kohistan, rain water courses and inside forest which has decayed its value during the previous 16 years,” Khan Member, one of the locals, told Dawn.
He said that locals and officials of forest department couldn’t sell such a large chunk of timber without the approval of provincial government. He said that 80 per cent of the amount generated from the sale of the timber was distributed among locals, who owned the forest, while 20 per cent went to government, which was responsible for the management of forests.
Mr Member said that harvesting of dry wind fallen trees was a time consuming exercise. He said after the approval of the policy, the forest department devised a working plan that included marking of trees and third party validation.
He said that the previous policy for harvesting dry wind fallen trees was approved in 2003 by the then Mutahidda Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He added that since then successive governments failed to allow legal harvesting and selling of the dumped timber.
Mr Member said that they made all efforts and raised the issue on all forums to draw government’s attention to allow sale of the timber, but to no avail.
A senior official of forest department told Dawn that the harvested timber had been decaying with each passing day since its cutting. He said that the major chunk of the timber lying in water courses inside forests could be driven away by floods anytime.
He said that locals were the ultimate sufferers of the long delay in disposing of the dumped timber as 80 per cent of the amount generated from its sale was given to owners of forest.
The official said that government should not link the policy of extracting timber with the time rather it should be linked with the designated harvested timber as preparing working plan and marking of dry, dying and diseased tree was a time consuming task.
He said that most of the forests were located in snow-covered mountains so forest department had limited time to harvest the marked trees and bring them to roads.
Another senior official of forest and wildlife department, when contacted, said that the government was reluctant to allow the sale of harvested timber. When such timber was loaded onto trucks, social media users took its pictures and started a propaganda regarding timber smuggling, he added.
“It is the fear of social media due to which the provincial government is not allowing the department to dispose of the timber,” the official said. He said that forest and wildlife department recently moved a summary to higher authorities to obtain approval from provincial cabinet for disposing of the dumped timber.
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