Loggers have been exploiting laxity at the Kenya Forest Service and colluding with forestry officials to reap money in a racket that threatens Kenya’s future.
Through faking documents and brazenly harvesting planted forests without approvals, the loggers have been cheating the government off revenues from 135,000 hectares forests.
In Mololo, Kericho County, a logger paid Sh7 million for trees worth Sh39 million while at Chepkopet 1,836 trees had been cut down without any approval.
In a case of cooking figures, the loggers possessed records which had understated the number of trees at Elgeyo by 3,609 trees and 457 trees at Singore which had almost allowed them to skim the extra money off the exchequer.
In several cases the officers allowed trees worth over Sh40 million to be cut down in Elgeyo Marakwet but never bothered to collect the money.
A clear pointer to collusion was also witnessed in Sorget Forest station in Kericho and Narasha forest station in Baringo where one company got 11 slots while the rest of the companies got one and two portions each.
In Uasin Gishu, one company used three different names to get more slots but were discovered since they share the same postal and telephone address which they did not bother to hide.
The collusion between KFS and the millers has created conflict of interest that has fuelled the illegal activities.
The taskforce is now proposing that a KFS manager either concentrate on conservation or harvesting and not conduct the dual roles.
“KFS should have a commercial division whose core mandate is to deal with the promotion of professional private forests with the aim of guiding promoting and regulating rational utilization of resources,” the report said.
The taskforce recommended that KFS should put in controls to ensure quality assurance of the sale inventory before the trees are felled.
The saw millers apparently do not bother with harvesting rules and are at liberty to replace the trees or leave the land bare, most chose the latter.
