RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Con­ser­va­tor of Forests Den­ny Dipchans­ingh is deny­ing that a vir­tu­al draw held on Mon­day for State-owned Teak and Pine was done se­cret­ly.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Dipchans­ingh said the T&T Sawmillers and Lum­ber Man­u­fac­tur­ers Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Lim­it­ed, as well as the Sawmillers Co­op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety, were part of the draw which rep­re­sent­ed the ma­jor­i­ty of saw millers.

He de­nied that cer­tain par­tic­i­pants were giv­en 100-acre plots of State forests to ex­ploit.Say­ing the re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of saw millers will not be im­ple­ment­ed this year be­cause of COVID-19, Dipchans­ingh said all saw millers who had valid li­cens­es for 2019 and who had com­plet­ed their fields were award­ed 2.5-hectare fields this year.

“The draw was on­ly held to­day and the list­ing will be sent off to the Min­istry and the saw millers will get a call with­in a  week in­di­cat­ing where and what was their al­lo­ca­tion,” Dipchans­ingh re­vealed.

He not­ed that the al­lo­ca­tion process and the acreage re­mained the same.

“It is to­tal­ly in­ac­cu­rate to say that some peo­ple are get­ting 100 acres. The dif­fer­ence was in the way the draw was held. Usu­al­ly, the saw millers would have walked up and pulled the lot for them­selves. In this case, the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary would have pulled all the draws for every­one. You can­not have a mass gath­er­ing or a pub­lic open­ing be­cause of the COVID-19 re­stric­tions so we had to change the way al­lo­ca­tions were done,” Dipchans­ingh said.

Asked why the draw was be­ing held so close top the wet sea­son, Dipchands­ingh said they want­ed to cap­i­tal­ize on the re­main­ing part of the dry sea­son.

“This is just so that the Forestry Di­vi­sion could al­lo­cate fields and cap­i­tal­ize on any part of the dry sea­son which is not to­tal­ly over as yet. We are try­ing to help the saw millers.  We un­der­stand that the in­dus­try would be af­fect­ed be­cause of COVID 19,” he added.

He not­ed that the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary,  deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, act­ing head of Le­gal, Head of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit, the di­rec­tor of IT and the con­ser­va­tor were part of the draw.

Sawmillers, who reached out to the Guardian, ini­tial­ly claimed the draw was un­fair as the ma­jor­i­ty of saw millers were un­able to view it. Many were not told about it and it was not ad­ver­tised.

 “This is the first time the State is giv­ing out con­tracts with­out pro­vid­ing the rel­e­vant doc­u­ments which in­clude Na­tion­al In­sur­ance clear­ance, Board of In­land Rev­enue Clear­ance and VAT clear­ance,” a source said.

How­ev­er, pres­i­dent of the T&T Sawmillers and Lum­ber Man­u­fac­tur­ers Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­ety Lim­it­ed Narad Bidaisee said the draw was fair and in­clud­ed all le­git­i­mate saw millers.

“Be­cause of COVID, we could not do it in a reg­u­lar fo­rum. It was fair and every­one was in­clud­ed and those who had par­tic­i­pat­ed in the last draw and fin­ished their fields would have been award­ed fields. Those who com­mit­ted of­fences such as pil­fer­ing and those who failed to com­plete their fields were ex­clud­ed,” Bidaisee said.

He ad­mit­ted that his Co­op­er­a­tive was un­able to meet with all mem­bers to ad­vise them about the draw and this would have caused mis­in­for­ma­tion. Bidaisee said his Co­op­er­a­tive rep­re­sent­ed 40 mem­bers.

Pres­i­dent of the Sawmillers Co­op­er­a­tive Sudesh Jag­ger­sar al­so said the draw was open to le­git­i­mate saw millers.

Say­ing he rep­re­sent­ed 72 saw millers, Jag­ger­sar said the draw took place be­tween 9.30 am to 12.30 mid­day. He ex­pressed grat­i­tude to the Forestry Di­vi­sion for or­gan­is­ing the draw say­ing even though they were up­grad­ing to a new sys­tem, the Forestry De­part­ment recog­nised the need to stim­u­late busi­ness among the saw millers. 

Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture Clarence Ramb­harat did not an­swer to calls and failed to re­spond to mes­sages left for him via What­sApp.