The Project Officer for Nature and Development Foundation “NDF”, Madam Margaret Appiah has stressed that wood being sold on the domestic market of Ghana must be legal just as those being exported to other countries.
According to her, the Forestry Commission as part of implementing the Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) programme developed a WOOD TRACKING SYSTEM to verify the legality of wood being traded in Ghana by timber and Sawmill operators.
“Initially when the Wood Tracking System was developed, it was solely the Forestry Commission who had entry to the system.
Timber operators were not allotted access to the system. However, upon dialogue, a window has been created for industry operators to follow scores on their own operations and actions”. Mrs. Appiah added.
The Projects Officer [ for NDF] in an interview with the Sekondi-Takoradi based Journalist, Benjamin Bray said that the basis of the Hands-On training was to educate the Timber and Sawmill operators on how to navigate the window that has been created for them to access the Ghana Wood Tracking System.
However, the exercise that took place in the western region – Takoradi also made it possible for Saw Millers to check on the registration of their companies in the GWTS as participants keenly scrolled through the list of companies in the GWTS to identify their companies.
She continued that the industry is directly facing a lot of challenges and that the current sore point of compliant has been the removal of their lumber at the various Forestry Commission checkpoints.
Explaining that the removal of the lumber may be due to violation of some pertinent legality requirements and or standards on the path of industry.
The Private Sector entities at the training were prepared to realize that any wood being drawn to Accra, Kumasi or export which cannot be verified as legal is impounded.
Therefore, she commended section of the Saw Millers who are engaged in the ideal process and urged others to keep proper records of their operations and processes.
The program was funded by the UK Government through their Forest, Governance, Market, and climate “FGMC” programme.
Source: Benjamin Bray – Sekondi-Takoradi
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