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Land Ministry adopts strategies and interventions –
Dapaah
Accra, April 8, Ghanadot/GNA – The
Ministry of Land, Forestry and Mines has adopted a number of
strategies and interventions to review policies on
allocation of timber rights through a competitive bidding
process to ensure fairness, equity, transparency and prevent
substantial loss of revenue to the state.
The Ministry is also implementing a Voluntary Partnership
Agreement with the European Union on legal timber to ensure
legality in timber export trade and that only legal timber
enters the EU market, Mrs Esther Obeng-Dapaah, the Sector
Minister, said.
Addressing journalists at the Meet-The-Press series in Accra
on Tuesday, she said the process would prevent illegal
logging and loss of revenue to government, control waste and
prevent over exploitation of timber.
She said, to address the rapid deforestation, the Ministry
was implementing various forms of forest plantation
programmes with communities and the private sector under the
newly established Plantation Department within the Forest
Services Division.
The Minister said so far, over 107,000 hectares had been
planted and about 46,000 full-time and approximately 1.1
million part-time workers were employed.
Mrs. Dapaah said her outfit was also developing a corporate
customer focus and business oriented organization located in
a common building to facilitate needed teamwork for improved
service delivery.
She said the Ministry was also implementing various
plantation development programmes to generate employment,
reduce poverty and as well as restore loss of forest cover.
She said they had also instituted a benefit-sharing scheme
under the programme for parties involved to make it
economically attractive to both local and foreign
investment.
Mrs. Dapaah announced that Cabinet had approved a
benefit-sharing scheme for parties involved in Modified
Taungya System – Forestry Commission (40 per cent), Farmer
(40 per cent), Landowner (15 per cent) and Local Community
(five per cent).
She said the Attorney General was considering for approval,
a reviewed benefit-sharing scheme for parties involved in
Commercial Plantation Development.
GNA
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