The continued plunder of trees in Viphya Plantations\u2014where an estimated area of about 930 hectares has been encroached or illegally harvested\u2014has resulted into an accumulated loss of at least K2.3 billion at the present market value.<\/p>\n
Major concessionaire of the plantation, commonly known as Chikangawa, Raiply Malawi Limited is also remitting only around K700 million a year instead of more than K3 billion due to scaling down of production.<\/p>\n
The loss could even be more in years to come as Raiply has painted a gloomy picture of its operations\u2019 sustainability due to the fast dwindling of its major raw materials\u2014the trees\u2014in its concession area comprising some 20, 000 hectares.<\/p>\n
A concession agreement signed between the private limited company and the Malawi Government binds the two entities together and gives the former exclusive rights to harvest and utilise the forest resources within its concession area.<\/p>\n
However, the trees and the land remain the property of Malawi Government with Raiply paying taxes on imports, corporate taxes and sales taxes, according to the Forestry Department.<\/p>\n
When Members of Parliament (MPs) belonging to the Natural Resources and Climate Change Committee toured the concession area on Saturday, they expressed concern over the plunder of trees which mostly borders on fires and illegal harvesting.<\/p>\n
According to Raiply Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Thomas Oommen, since 2000, the company\u2019s concession area has experienced 396 fires, affecting 26, 154 hectares while damaging 6, 187 hectares in the process.<\/p>\n
The committee\u2019s chairperson, Werani Chilenga, faulted the Forestry Department for taking a modest approach when dealing with forest plunder criminals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were supposed to be generating a lot of revenue from this forest but we are failing to take care of the trees. For once, we need to be serious as a country; we are watching the forest steadily diminish and very soon, we will be importing wood if nothing is done quickly,\u201d said Chilenga.<\/p>\n
Other members of the committee echoed his concern and wondered why the forest continues being depleted despite calls for action having been raised many times before.<\/p>\n
They accused the Forestry Department of colluding with illegal sawyers who are harvesting even those trees that are not yet mature.<\/p>\n
According to Raiply, 33, 000 hectares of the Viphya Plantations falling outside its concession area have been exhausted due to unsustainable harvesting.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Raiply is now the only place with mature timber trees, there has been an increase in illegal harvesting and timber sawing. Sometimes trees are illegally felled, converted into logs and transported away for sawing,\u201d said Oommen.<\/p>\n
During the tour, MPs found some mature trees deep into the forest felled while elsewhere, remnants the sawing activities spoke volumes of the numerous trees that had been illegally harvested.<\/p>\n
Deputy Director of Forestry, Teddie Kamoto, admitted that Raiply\u2019s concession area is facing a lot of challenges.<\/p>\n
He said on allegations that some forestry officials are colluding with illegal timber sawyers, an investigation is being conducted and an appropriate action will be taken.<\/p>\n
However, Chilenga argued that the issue of depleting Chikangawa Forest needs immediate action \u201csince it is a crisis that may become very costly at the end\u201d.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, it has emerged that some timber dealers who were once given licences to harvest trees from the forest have not yet honoured about K1 billion which they owe government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The continued plunder of trees in Viphya Plantations\u2014where an estimated area of about 930 hectares has been encroached or illegally harvested\u2014has resulted into an accumulated loss of at least K2.3 billion at the present market value. Major concessionaire of the plantation, commonly known as Chikangawa, Raiply Malawi Limited is also remitting only around K700 million […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27421"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27427,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27421\/revisions\/27427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}