Forest harvesting guidelines under review to benefit nearby villagers

DAILY NEWS Reporters in Dodoma

Deputy Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism , Mr Ramo Makani

THE Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism mulls reviewing the 2007 Forest Harvesting Guidelines to enable people living around forest reserves benefit from the resource.

This was said yesterday by the Deputy Minister, Mr Ramo Makani, when responding to Mr Cosato Chumi (Mafinga Urban-CCM) who asked the government to consider licensing villagers living around forest reserves to take part in harvesting activities.
The MP charged that in the last harvesting season, there was no even a single village in Mufindi District which obtained a licence to take harvest in the National Sao Hill Forest Reserve. Under the 2002 Forest Act, communities are able to protect, reserve, manage and sustainably use forests on village land for their own long-term development needs.
Mr Chumi wanted to know if the government is ready to issue harvesting licences to entrepreneurship groups and other villagers to take part in the activity for their socio-economic development. The deputy minister said the government recognises the importance of reviewing the guidelines as it is in line with the ruling party’s 2015/2020 election manifesto.
He said his ministry through the Tanzania Forest Services Agency (TFS) has been receiving applications from the villagers, however, submissions surpassed the number they were required to work on. For instance, he said that in 2015/2016, it received about 4,986 applications while it could only work on 1,030 submissions which is the maximum number indicated in the guidelines. He informed the House that the ministry was giving top priorities to companies which inked contracts with the government after which other applicants were considered.
“Harvesting licences are first given to companies especially those which were earlier being owned by the government. This is due to the fact that we have so limited resources thus we can’t work on every application,” he explained.
He refuted claims that the government was ignoring applications from villagers living around the forest reserves, saying that the ministry had issued licences to 183 villages amounting to 2.8bn/- in the past five years. On corporate social responsibility, the deputy minister said that Sao Hill Industries implemented various development projects worth about 880m/-, including making school desks in 23 villages