GUJRAT, April 25: The district forest department is incurring massive financial losses owing to alleged wrongdoings of senior functionaries.

A monopoly by the officials and contractors to discourage the reserve (official) rate and the organised timber theft are also doing a great deal of damage to the department, Dawn learnt here on Tuesday.

EDO (Agriculture) Shahid Rasheed Awan and DO (Forest) Moazzam Saeed, according to sources, are on the forefront in committing wrongdoings. They said the district government had asked the EDO in January last to make arrangements for the auction of trees and EDO Awan and DO Saeed made around 25 lots of trees. A committee accordingly sent proposals seeking the official reserve rate of lots.

The committee members, however, kept the provincial higher-ups in the dark while sending proposals for the reserve rate which resulted in issuance of a nominal reserve rate by the higher authorities for costly lots. Both the officials allegedly pocketed hundreds of thousands of rupees through the deal.

The contractors pooled on the auction day and allegedly gave Rs300,000 to the two officials, sources said, adding that the contractors got the lots of trees after raising some rupees instead of the reserve rate.

Each lot contains dozens of trees located on several rural-area routes, including Awan Sharif, Karrianwala, Tanda, Dinga, Jaura, Karnana, Kotla Arab Ali Khan and Jalalpur Jattan roads.

Sources said the mafia being abetted by DO Moazzam Saeed had felled hundreds of Alba Morass, Shisham and other green trees worth Rs2 million from almost all the auctioned lots. They said the DO had also tampered with the official record to conceal the theft.

The district administration has failed to take action against the timber mafia, which has been active in the limits of the district forest department for the last many months. It has deprived Gujrat of Alba Morass, Shisham and other green trees with the alleged abetment of the district officer.

When contacted, DO Moazzam denied his link with the mafia and expressed his ignorance about the theft of trees. He also denied tampering with the official record book.

He claimed that no-one had taken any amount from the contractors and not even any pool was held on the auction day.

EDO Shahid Rasheed Awan admitted that he had received prior information that the mafia was in a bid to stole timber during the recently-held auction of trees. He said he thoroughly studied the auction and got information that a contractor had obtained a contract of around 98 trees against higher bids near Karnana and was in a bid to steal trees.

The EDO said he stopped the contractor from uprooting the 98 auctioned trees with a direction to DO Saeed to make arrangements to underline the auctioned trees which the contractor would cut in his presence on the spot.

He denied the allegation of siding with the contractors and taking bribe from them.

In March, the district government had again asked the EDO to arrange for the auction of 27 lots of trees. Sources claimed that the two officials and their favourite contractors chalked out a plan to earn money but they failed to do so when the provincial authorities fixed Rs250 per cubic feet reserve rate for the March 17 auction.

A contractor, said sources, got a lot against Rs333 per cubic feet while the two officials obliged one of their favourite contractors by giving him a lot against Rs251 per cft. They said that the two officials cancelled the auction of the remaining 25 lots on the pretext that no other contractor was interested in biding due to such a high reserve rate.

They said that the officials did so to discourage the reserve rate after their failure to get money.