BY GERALD KITABU
Last week, The Guardian on Sunday revealed rampant corruption in the Angai village land forest reserve in Liwale, Lindi Region.
The villagers and their leaders accused the district leaders of corruption, colluding and approving forged documents to facilitate illegal timber harvesting, a situation that has led to severe degradation of one of the richest woodland ecosystem proposed to be gazetted as Village Land Forest Reserves.In this last part, the paper takes through the comments made by the Liwale and Lindi regional authorities, the Tanzania Forest Service Agency (TFS), PCCB, other stakeholders and the Ministry for Natural Resources and Tourism on the scam.
An investigation into severe degradation of one of the richest woodland ecosystems in Southern Tanzania has revealed that district leaders were involved in the scam.
While some district leaders would downplay corruption allegations and others would decline comments, the Liwale District Commissioner Ephraim Mmbaga and residents of 24 villages surrounding the forest reserve would acknowledge involvement of the district leaders in the scam.
They accuse their district leaders of failure to attend to barrages of complaints they have been filing against the illegal timber harvesters in the past five years, the period they say no official from the district ever paid them a visit.
Other allegations against the district leaders include forging a league with the forest Mafiosi through facilitating counterfeit documents to ferry illegal timbers and paying informers for the criminal syndicate who would annihilate a villager daring to intervene.
However, the district leaders catapult the allegations back to the villagers, saying it was themselves to blame for the ill practices as they would feed the district leaders with wrong information.
“It is the villagers and their leaders who should be taken responsible for document forgery, if any, because we normally rely on information they give us before giving approval to timber harvesters,” says Damasi Mumwi, the Liwale District Land and Natural Resources officer.
“The District Council usually acts in per with the information provided by the village leaders because they belong to areas where the harvest takes place,” says the Acting Liwale District Executive Director, Severin Mganga.
Despite dismissing information from the village leaders as lies, the top officials cite “faith and trust” they have in the leaders as a reason why they do not authenticate the whereabouts on the ground before giving approval to the illegal harvesters.
However, Mumwi accuses the same villagers in whom he has faith and trust of being reluctant to cooperate and mean at providing information that may lead to apprehension of the illegal harvesters.
He says despite the setbacks set by the villagers in the control of the forest reserve, his office deserves a thumb-up for a good job.
Short of last year records, Mumwi says, “in this year alone, his office has apprehended twelve people, filed more than six cases and six illegal harvesters are currently serving jail terms.”
Courtesy of the district leaders this year, according to Mumwi, is also seizure of three chain saws, 25 ordinary wood saws and several illegal consignments of timbers harvested in Angai and Nyara Iperere forest reserves.
But in what appears to be an in-fight for publicity within the district’s leadership circles, other district leaders par with The Guardian on Sunday’s revelations, vowing to embattle the forest scam given the amendment of the law governing timber harvesting they allege provides loopholes for illegal harvest.
“The law provides loopholes for these harvesters to use fake names on grounds that they can be hardly tracked down,” says Ephraim Mmbaga the Liwale District Commissioner, adding, “the law governing harvesting is so weak that it limits the district harvesting committee to the list of names short of access to the harvesters in person.”
Acknowledging allegations that his committee had approved illegal timber harvesting in Luwele and Chigugu villages on account of forged documents, he says the village leaders might have colluded with the harvesters to provide the district committee wrong information.
But he also suggests that the syndicate involved in the deforestation of Angai is wider than the findings by The Guardian on Sunday, saying it includes both government officials and civil servants going under fake identities.
“I can tell you without reservation that a big number of illegal loggers are State officials and civil servants using imposter names,” says Mmbaga, vowing to bring the culprits to book despite “their connections with higher authorities.”
“When I once decided to meet the harvesters to deliberate on their activities, no one showed up as if they feared I would unravel their true identities,” he says.
But Mmbaga’s is not a one-man army. If the already rebellious villagers all around Angai would be a possible infantry, Joseph Kitundu, the district Administrative Secretary who has vowed to join the commissioner’s bandwagon in fighting the forest criminal syndicate is likely to be his second-in-command.
“The revelation is shocking… though I’m not a member of the District Harvesting Committee, among others, I will advise the commissioner over how to go about it,” he says.
However, the commissioner cites poverty among both the villagers and the district officials as possible motive behind their involvement in illegal deforestation activities in the absence of alternative source of income.
“At district level, we face acute shortage of funds to efficiently manage the forest reserves,” he says, adding, “for example, the Harvesting Committee has been prompted into holding only one meeting annually, instead of regular quarterly meetings.”
While Tanzania Forest Service Agency (TFS) - Southern Zone manager for Liwale District, Mogela Mbago declines to comment, TFS Zonal Principle Forest Officer Boazi Sanga and Senior Forest Officer in-charge of resources management Rashid Sembe distance themselves from the scam, singing from the same hymn-sheet as of the officials’ in the District.
They accuse the villagers and their leaders of irresponsibility, and the government, of delays in dealing with legal amendment and other issues related to the Community Based Forest Management (CBFM), giving a room for the villagers and businessmen to engage in illegal harvest.
They say the absence of strong laws governing forest management and lack of experts in forestry in Southern regions up until 2012 led to rampant illegal harvesting where businessmen would do the harvesting under pretext to obtain timbers for schools construction.
“Now that the laws have slightly improved, we have at least seen many of them going to the Forest Department to seek harvesting permits,” says Sanga.
But TFS Chief Executive Officer Juma Mgoo is not only concerned of the fate of the forest reserve, but also of the illegal loggers’, saying “having nowhere to go when the forest is exhausted, they’ll have to shift to other places.”
He also vows to fight saying he would communicate with zonal managers and the district officials to make sure the situation is properly handled.
“Though TFS has no direct mandate over the forest, we shall work with other stakeholders such as the District Council and the villagers to see that the situation is arrested as soon as possible,” he says.
But the Liwale District anti-corruption chief breaks into tatters the vehemently defended notion by some district leaders that they had nothing to do with the illegal harvesting scam.
Commander Asseri Mandari of the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) in Liwale district cites two separate incidents in March in which his squad arrested and charged with illegal harvesting five people including two district forest officials.
“We keep track on many others,” he says.
“We are also going to probe deep on Mtawatawa village forest scam,” says the commander in response to The Guardian on Sunday’s revelation of 740-timber consignment impounded in Angai forest reserve but to be later sold at a ridiculous low price to an unknown client.
He also condemned the leaders of the district, villages and wards for cultivating selfish interests in the forest reserve, saying “they treat the forest as their personal property, turning to us only when they fail to settle their share scores.”
But in a clear indication of a wide communication gap between Angai Forest Reserve and Lindi Regional authorities, the Regional Administrative Secretary Abdallah Chikota and Regional Commissioner Ludovic Mwananzila, acknowledge to have only a slight idea of what is happening down in Liwale forests though they say they do occasional follow-ups.
“I paid a visit to Mtawatawa village and talked to the village leadership recently, and I was impressed that they have launched routine patrols on the forest,” says Chikota.
This is contrary to what has been observed by the villagers who had earlier said that no official from the district and regional administrations ever paid them a visit in the past five years.
Chikota’s “visit” also coincides with the “mysterious sell of the 740-timber consignment” a few days later, as revealed by the Guardian on Sunday, but about which he has no idea.
However, Mwananzila acknowledges allegations that unfaithful district officials are behind issuance of permits to illegal harvesters, saying “some of these problems are caused by our experts at the district level who would randomly issue permits.”
Meanwhile, the newly-appointed Lindi Regional Commissioner Mwantumu Mahiza says she will give the fight against deforestation in the region the first priority in her policy.
“I am going to devote all my energy to the revival of our forests that we regain our lost water and fresh air,” she says, adding; “among others, we are soon going to launch environmental youth groups that will be tasked to plant trees.”
But “where are the leaders? …where are the people to enforce the laws?” are questions posed by the Chairman of the parliamentary committee for Lands, Natural Resources and Environment James Lembeli in his call for the government to hunt and bring to justice officials and businessmen involved in depleting the Angai Forest Reserves.
“It’s not lack of education that degrades the forest resources but greed and corruption among government officials,” he says.
He challenges the government into going more than just fighting illegal loggers in Angai in a situation where government officials are freely ferrying logs, timbers and charcoal using government vehicles.
“Political support is needed this time around more than any other time in the protection and management of the forest resources,” he says.
Vice Chairman of the Parliamentary committee Abdulkarim Shah says the findings by The Guardian on Sunday “that have brought shockwaves to the government need serious contemplation and quick actions, but to start with I will work hand in hand with you to probe into the leaders behind this scam.”
But the Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism Lazaro Nyalandu goes further by taking The Guardian on Sunday with him on his urgent visit to Angai Forest planned in the near future.
“My immediate plan is to annihilate the syndicate and take legal actions against the perpetrators,” says the Minister.
Tanzania Community Forest Conservation Network (MJUMITA), Lindi and Mtwara Agribusiness Support (LIMAS) and Mpingo Conservation and Development Initiative (MCDI) warn over the possible disappearance of Angai forest and possible land conflicts among residents of the surrounding villages if urgent measures to fight illegal timber harvesters are not taken.
As long as Angai forest remains the major non-sanctioned bread earner for the villagers, it will remain a source of conflicts not only between the district leaders and the villagers, but also among the villagers themselves where land and plot boundaries are concerned.
SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY
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