Illegal settlers in timber estates face eviction
GOVERNMENT will evict people that settled illegally in timber estates and flush out those involved in illegal mining activities in the plantations, particularly in Chimanimani, Manicaland provincial chief lands officer Mr Clifford Mukoyi has said.
Mr Mukoyi said the Provincial Lands Committee had engaged both the illegal settlers and their traditional leaders over the matter, but to date they had not shown signs of heeding the instructions to leave.
“The problem we are facing in those areas is that the traditional leaders that are supposed to represent Government interests, as well as protect their subjects, are the ones claiming that they can’t move out, as they had traditional rights to the land,” he said.
“The leaders in fact want estates to cede part of the land to the people and do their business elsewhere, a development that is stalling the revival of this important sector of Manicaland, as well as the national economy.”
Timber Producers Federation chief executive officer, My Darlington Duwa, told The Herald that 17 544 hectares of plantation timber had been occupied by the settlers, while mining activities had disrupted timber production in an area of forests estimated to be around 500ha or slightly less, especially in Tarka Forest in Chimanimani.
“The timber industry is a strategic sector for Zimbabwe, contributing between three and four percent to the Gross Domestic Product,” he said.
It provides employment and social amenities, for instance in the construction of schools, clinics and in road maintenance.
“Timber is also a source of foreign currency for the country in different ways.
“Tobacco farmers use wood to cure their crop and later sell it to generate foreign currency, while about 60 percent of Zimbabweans use it as a source of energy.
“Timber’s contribution to the economy is constant. It is a low-hanging fruit that the country can always pluck and use, so we need to boost its production and not end up importing it.”
Allied Timbers chief executive officer, Dr Dan Sithole, said it was necessary to bring the nation’s consciousness to the goings-on in the timber industry that was facing a possible decimation.
“Zimbabwe sits on 39 million hectares of land and out this figure, only 200 000ha are suitable for commercial forests, which means that we need to seriously protect the forests that we have, lest we end up importing timber like we used to do in the 1970s when we used timber from North America and Europe,” he said.
“We had managed to establish our forests, especially after the formation of the Forestry Commission and these are the forests that we are busy destroying.
“Forests are incidentally a major pillar of one of Government’s Zim-Asset targets — to provide homes for all by 2050.
“A home is a roof over one’s head, so without trees there will be no roof to talk of.”
If the trend of destroying the timber without re-planting continued in the next eight or nine years, the country would be facing shortages, warned Dr Sithole.