Govt will enforce directive on lumber for local market

Akyawkrom (Ash), July 6, GNA - Mr A.S.K. Boachie-Dapaah, chief Executive of the Forestry Commission, has stated that government will continue to enforce the directive that enjoins sawmills to provide at least 20 percent of their lumber for the domestic market. He said government's commitment to continue to enforce the directive was designed to help alleviate the problem of lumber shortages on the domestic market while making wood more accessible to wood processors.

Mr Boachie-Dapaah made the statement in an address read for him at a two-day national delegates congress of the Woodworkers Association of Ghana (WAG) at Akyawkrom in the Ejisu-Juaben District on Saturday. The congress being attended by 121 delegates, would discuss and adopt a new constitution for the WAG and also create a platform for the election of new national executive officers.

He stressed the need for those in the wood-processing sector to re-direct their energies towards the development and utilisation of the lesser-used species so as to ensure that the scope of species available to them for work was increased. "This way, the pressure on the popular primary species that are now scarce and are in the process of being endangered, will be reduced drastically", he noted. Mr Boachie-Dapaah also entreated wood industrialists to complement efforts of the government at rehabilitating degraded forest reserves and increasing the forest cover of the country by also investing in commercial forest plantations.

Mr George Smith-Graham, National Project Co-ordinator, Capacity Building in Training, Planning and Management of Forest Industries, International Tropical Timber Organisation (ITTO), said with the instrumentality of the Forestry Commission, focus was not to be shifted from sawmills to offering training to small-scale carpenters. He said this had become necessary because small-scale wood users had been identified as a sector that caused waste to lumber as a result of the inadequate skill training.