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PAPUA
NEW GUINEA RAINFOREST CAMPAIGN NEWS
Editorial: PNG Timber Deals a Concern
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Forest
Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
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5/12/99
OVERVIEW
& COMMENTARY by EE
In
country concern mounts over the current rush to allocate forest
resources
in a desperate bid to generate cash in the short-term.
g.b.
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Title: Timber deals a concern
Source: Post Courier, Editorial
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for
permission to reprint
Date: May 12, 1999
Byline: Editorial Board
HOW
desperate are we for fast cash and big projects to fill the
gaping
hole at the national Treasury?
We ask
this question in the light of our much-touted investment
roadshow,
the resumption of talks with European bankers and, now,
revelations
of the Government's desperation to get big timber projects
``fast-tracked''.
We get
the feeling that the Government is not sure any of these
avenues
of salvation will lead anywhere secure.
It
seems as if our leaders are getting desperate and believe they must
grasp
at every lifeline floating past in the sea of turbulence which
is
PNG's finances.
How
else can we explain the seemingly indecent rush to push mammoth
timber
projects through, in most cases sidestepping blatantly past
procedures
and laws.
Departmental
advice has been ignored, indeed trampled on, in the
latest
case of the Kamula Doso project in Western Province.
The
proposal to fast-track the project, we are told, rested largely on
a
submission from the Government's watchdog on our natural resources,
the
Department of Environment and Conservation.
What a
strange situation.
It's a
disturbing situation, we believe, when the proposal would
benefit
a company that is said to already control 70 to 80 per cent of
the
timber industry in Papua New Guinea.
More
disturbing when it is considered that the same company built a
large
plywood mill, seemingly so it could go to the Government and say
it
needed new areas to log just to give the new mill enough timber to
justify
its existence.
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