The
Forestry Commission Training Center (FCTC) has installed a modern wood processing
equipment to support the training and operations of artisanal millers.
The
LT 40 Wood Mizer, purchased at a cost of 200 thousand Ghana Cedis, is supported
by the EU-funded chainsaw project on ‘Securing the integration of legal and
legitimate domestic timber markets into Voluntary Partnership Agreement’.
The
project is implemented by Tropenbos International (TBI) Ghana and partners.
TBI
Programmes Director, Samuel Kwabena Nketiah, says the machine is to help
upscale the training of artisanal millers who want to supply legal lumber to
the domestic market.
The
goal, he says, is to curtail the illegalities and conflicts associated with
chainsaw milling, whilst addressing livelihood issues.
“With
this machine and the whole concept, we have managed to get a replacement for
illegal chainsaw milling. The other side of the project also looked at
alternative livelihoods because we realized that to stop people from their
livelihood activities, without giving them a substitute, will serve no purpose,”
said Mr. Nketiah.
Through
a series of multi-stakeholder discussions under the EU Chainsaw project, artisanal
milling has been accepted as an alternative to illegal chainsaw milling for
supplying legal timber for the domestic market.
The
small-medium scale milling of timber from specified legal sources is capable of
recovering at least 50percent of dimension lumber from logs for the domestic
market only.
Director
of the FCTC, Joseph Boakye, says the installed equipment would be beneficial in
the training of former chainsaw operators who want to formalize to legal
artisanal milling.
“We
will also be interested in assisting members of DOLTA – Domestic Lumber Traders
Association – who can purchase their own logs and we’ll process it for them…
and those who have their own plantations, if they harvest, can bring it here
and we’ll process if for them and charge reasonable prices,” he added.
The
piloting of artisanal milling started in 2012 and the concept to help institute
and make it operational was finalized in 2014.
The
capacity of potential millers were built in the areas of group dynamics and
leadership, the techniques of timber milling and business management and
marketing.
Five
artisanal groups in the Brong Ahafo, Ashanti, Western and Eastern regions have
been linked with forest concession holders for legal timber to feed their mills
and are producing for the domestic market.
Alexander
Amoako Boadu, Director of Operations at the Forestry Services Division of the
Forestry Commission, says any means to train chainsaw operators to formalize their
activities is critical to deal with the challenge of illegal tree felling.
“But
the bigger picture lies with the communities that we’d expect to assist us in
protecting the forest because stay very close to the forests and they see those
who come in and go out,” he noted.
More
artisan millers are expected to be trained to join the pilot process after
which the project will be institutionalized as a major means of feeding the
local markets with legal lumber in the light of Ghana’s VPA implementation.
But
to achieve holistic outcomes, challenges would have to be addressed in the
areas of access to raw materials, elite capture of artisanal milling, abuse of
system, corruption and dwindling timber resources.
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