Forestry Commission clarifies

http://www.guyanachronicle.com/letters.html#Anchor--------54566

Forestry Commission clarifies
Guyana Chronicle, 13 July 2007

The Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) takes note of an article in
Sunday’s edition of Stabroek News (July 8, 2007) titled “Barama
harvesting legally outside its Concession – Commissioner of Forests”

The GFC wishes to clarify the following:

At no time did the Commissioner state that “Barama Timber Sales
Agreement allowed it to engage in contractual arrangements with smaller
logging companies. In this way, Barama harvested from these concessions
in exchange for capital investment in those companies.”

The commissioner actually made a very general statement indicating that
the Timer Sales Agreement and Wood Cutting Lease Agreement allow for
any company to sub-contract another entity, with the approval of the
Commissioner.

Many companies had approached the Commission for permission to engage
in sub-contracting since they did not themselves have all of the
equipment, machinery, technical skills and available financing to do
infrastructural works (road building etc) to allow effective
implementation of their Forest Management Plan and Annual Operational
Plans.

The Commission approved the sub-contracting based on this
justification. The Commission made it explicit, however, that this
sub-contracting was also intended to improve the ability of the
contracting company eventually to a point where it no longer had to
engage in sub-contracting. This aspect is now being enforced by the
Commission.
James Singh
Commissioner of Forest