Senior Minister NWFP Siraj-ul-Haq has directed Forest Department to make the payment procedure of royalty to the owners more easy, saying that the people of Hazara, Swat, Dir and Kohistan mainly depend on forests.
Moreover, he said that ban on timber cutting and delay in payment of royalty always caused numerous financial problems for them and even they had to make both ends meets.
Addressing a joint meeting of Forest Department and Forest Development Corporation at his office Civil Secretariat Peshawar on Friday, he said that the provincial government besides promotion of forests and environmental protection was taking solid steps to ensure welfare of the forest owners Those who attended the meeting were including Secretary for Environment Noorul Haq, Chief Conservator Mumtaz Khan, MD FDC Ghazi Marjan, MD BoK, Dr Munir Ahmad and Co-ordinator Finance Department Waqar Ayub was also attended by Provincial Minister Shahraz Khan, and MPA from Swat, Kohistan Malik Amirzada.
Siraj-ul-Haq directed the authorities to make the payment procedure of royalty to the owners easier. He said that people of Hazara, Swat, Dir and Kohistan were mainly depended on forests wealth while ban on timber cutting and delay in royalty always caused numerous financial problems for them and even they had to make both ends meet.
Senior Minister said that like other parts of the country, the forests owners of Swat, Dir and Kohistan also deserved 80 percent increase in royalty and thus social justice must be ensured by finalising all the procedural needs as soon as possible.
He announced a committee comprising MPAs, Farid Khan, Malik Amirzada, Chief Conservator Forests, Mumtaz Khan, Additional Secretary Finance, Abdus Samad, and MD FDC Ghazi Marjan to settle this matter and directed for submitting comprehensive report within one month.
The meeting decided to entrust the timber-cutting task to Joint Forests Management Committees (JFMC) to make this process more easy and transparent. Similarly it was decided that DFO of the concerned district would distribute the royalty among the beneficiaries directly to remove the unnecessary delay after getting amount from the timber market.
In order to provide financial assistance to forests owners in respect of the promotion and cutting of forests. MD BoK made clear that BoK has huge investment amount however guarantee for returning loans was a prerequisite. Upon this the Senior Minister directed for constituting a committee to formulate the loaning procedure for this purpose.