Lapeigu landowners welcome National Forest Authority
The National, Copyright 2000
November 30, 2000
By JOE KANEKANE
LAPEIGU landowners have commended the National Forest Authority (NFA) for entering into a joint venture arrangement with them which will enable them to attain maximum benefits from trees from the Lapeigu plantation owned by the NFA.
This was conveyed to NFA Managing Director Thomas Nen during a site tour to the Lapeigu and Fayantina plantations in the Eastern Highlands where the NFA has embarked on a major tree planting exercise.
Landowner representative Steven Kirupana said: ‘We are glad we can work alongside the NFA in ensuring that the tree planting and harvesting is done in a way where we both can benefit.’
Mr Kirupana said there had been instances where both parties had disagreements but that did not deter the relationship between the two parties and this, he attributed to the understanding between them.
He said since the NFA reactivated tree planting in the plantation they had always worked closely with the five different landowner groups in the area who have successfully set up their portable sawmill where they have been harvesting the trees.
‘Our operations, although small has enable us to understand how to go about conducting our operations and we have learnt a lot since commencing our operations last year,’ he said.
Mr Kirupana is the operations manager of the Basis Timber Limited a company engaged by the NFA there to harvest its trees which are burnt and others specified by the NFA.
The company had the capacity to produce 8-10 cubic metres of logs every day with a 50 per cent recovery rate of the logs.
Mr Kirupana has also established additional markets for the processed Hoop wood which they sell in Lae and Mt Hagen.
He also said the company is also looking at establishing a treatment plant within the parametres of its operations.
NFA’s forest officer in the area Gabriel Waranu advised Basis Timber Ltd to produce quality wood so that it could raise their profile.
Mr Waranu said a lot of companies left out this pivotal area and this often gave a bad impression to potential buyers of PNG wood. However he praised Basis Timber for preparing steps to address this.
Mr Nen commended the landowners for taking the initiative to work together with the NFA.
He also assured them that tree planting and reafforestation were NFA’s major priorities and they would assist landowner groups who were keen in working alongside the NFA to maintain this.
‘We encourage landowner groups to work alongside us so that we can plant more trees. We have one thing in common, we own the trees and the landowners own the land, so rather than working against each other we should work together,’ Mr Nen said.