Dear Editor,
I would like to clarify some of the arguments between the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) and the wood processing industry. After five years of minimal effective activity the GFC appears to be recovering a sense of its responsibilities for administration of the 13.7 million hectares of State Forests and the economic products from those forests as shown in its responses to letters in the newspapers.
Communications
The GFC website contains some documents but not others which the industry should be able to access readily. Now available are the Code of Practice on Timber Harvesting (second edition 2002) and a sufficient set of guidelines for pre-harvest inventories and all required forest management and annual operational plans, all important for the logging concessionaires.
The processors are served by the Wood Processing Standards and Procedures (September 2007). Missing from that website are the existing forest law and regulations (from 1953), the forestry chapter 14 of the National Development Strategy (1996), the national forest policy (1997) or the national forest plan (2001). Also missing is any background document to explain and rationalise the new standards for “sawmills, sawpits, lumberyards and timber depots”.
The claim by the Minister for Forestry of public consultation appears to mean only set presentations to GFC-selected stakeholders without meaningful feedback and revision from non-government stakeholders. The absence of record of such public consultations is also disappointing, as the GFC’s claim to have responded cannot be demonstrated.
Legislation
In letters to and a column in the press during 2006-7, Janet Bulkan has shown that the GFC has mainly adequate legislation and regulations to administer the State Forests, does have the right to direct the loggers, and has publicly-available guidance for them, although not publicising the law and regulations themselves. The GFC undermines its authority by claiming administrative discretion when no such latitude is contained in the law: GFC Public Relations Officer Jaime Hall “said that the Commission does have a degree of flexibility with some concessionaires”
(Kaieteur News January 16, 2008). In contrast, the Minister has reiterated that concessionaires will be treated alike, especially as members of the Forest Products Association have already been favoured with extra time to fulfil their obligations and cancel their huge debts. Note that there are some 300 small-scale loggers (with 2-year State Forest Permissions), some 58 members of the FPA, and only 24 active large-scale logging concessions.
As regards forest products, the law enables the Minister to prescribe standards for forest produce from State forests (Article 42 (f)), provide for the grading of forest produce from State forests and [prohibit or regulate] the sale of forest produce falling below prescribed standards (Article 42 (g)), prohibit or regulate the construction, erection or operation of sawmills and the importation of sawmilling machinery (Article 42 (j)) and register premises wherein timber is stored or kept for the purposes of a sawmill (Article 42 (k)).
In addition, under Regulation 26 (4) for sawmills, the Minister may issue a permit subject to such conditions as he may think fit.
The guidelines for sawmills on the GFC website consist of a presentation dated 18 September 2007. This presentation is a photographic comparison between the physical conditions apparently representative of sawmills in Guyana and conditions representing best practice in one or more mills at Bel
