Kilwa faults Zanzibar over forest depletion

BY WARYOBA YANKAMI

8th October 2013

Somanga residents

Somanga residents in Kilwa District have faulted people from Zanzibar, Pemba and Mafia for colluding with some Somanga residents to illegally harvest and transport timbers, logs and charcoals from reserved forests in their area.

The tampered reserved forests are Kitope, Sanduku and Mkongoro.
The residents say Zanzibar traders use khanga, sugar and other material things to woo some few villagers to illegally harvesting forest products, they later sell to the traders.

This was revealed by villagers from Somanga Simu, Marendego, Mpanda and Somanga Ndumbo last week at an environment meeting organised by the Tanzania Community Forest Networking (MJUMITA) to discuss environmental conservation among other challenges facing the villagers.They complained that whenever they seize forest products harvested illegally, the Municipal and Districts officials take them for their own use, instead of selling them and dividing the income with the villagers.
“Timber, charcoal and logs that are arrested are taken by District Officials something that has been weakening our efforts in fighting illegal forest harvesting,” they said.

Ramadhani Chuya from Somanga Simu said that there are conflicts of interest taking place within village governments.

Some leaders are accused of coveting office power as means to meeting personal interests through illegal forest harvesting.

Another hurdle raised is that by an official at Marendego forests products checkpoint, Kumbuka Victor, who said villagers have the tendency of burning forests when their forest products are arrested. As such he called on the government to impose stern punishment against them.

He said the current punishments are not harsh enough to deter the villagers from engaging in illegal forest harvesting.

“From experience, many of those who are arrested for illegal forest harvesting usually pay the fine and later on repeat the same illegal activities,” he warned asking the government to carryout education awareness on the impact of burning forests to deter the villagers from the act.

He also asked the government to provide reliable equipments for fire fighting in the event of that fires occur the villagers and authorities will be equipped to combat them saving hectares of precious land.
“I have not seen a single case when a forest fire was put off. It normally consumes the whole forest because fire fighters do not have modern equipments to enable them work efficiently,” he said.

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN