Stakeholders appearing before Parliamentary Committee on Natural Resources and Climate Change have imposed a ban effective Monday 2nd February 2015 on Round Wood one of the endangered species.
The ban also suspends the licenses people used in importation and exportation of Round Wood from Zambia and from any other country.
This comes after the series of meetings the Parliamentary Committee had with among others Department of Forestry, Ministry of Trade and Natural Resources, Malawi Revenue Authority and Malawi Police Service Officials on the continued practice of exportation and importation of Round Wood to countries like China regardless of the 2008 embargo of the product.
During this final consultation meetings whith the officials the committee asked the officials to come up with immediate solution to end the illegal business.
Among others officals also came up with recommendation that all enforcement agencies need to be empowered on impounding, arresting and prosecuting the culprits. And they also proposed that for a long time measure existing policies be revisited to close any existing loopholes.
However, officials also asked members of parliament to take part in sensitizing people in their respective constituencies on the need of protecting trees that are regarded as endangered species.
Now, these officials are expected to engage the Ministry of Justice on how they can implement some of these measures.
“The ban is effective today and from now onwards we will enforce this ban” said Principle Secretary for Environment and Climate Change Management Yanira Ntupanyama, “So we are no longer going to issue licenses.
“We are going to discuss also on the implementation of this ban but we will do that in consultation with other stakeholders. We need to make consultations because these are legal matters like on how to dispose the impounded wood.” She said arguing that the current forestry laws still encourages the culprits to get back the confiscated logs.
Ntupanyama added that currently Malawi is losing a lot from the illicit trade because wanton cutting down of such trees encourage numerous environment degradation including disasters like droughts and floods.
From its investigations the committee established that there are a lot of local and foreign traders who are exporting thousands of Round Wood logs. It is estimated that 15 tracks per day are transporting not less than 250 logs of Round Wood and each log is worth K15 thousand. The committee also learnt that the traders have licenses for the business yet since 2008 government announced a ban and issuing the license for export of the Round Wood.
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