PESHAWAR, April 13: The Youth Welfare Society for the Protection of Forests, Upper Dir, has asked the provincial government to amend the NWFP Forest Ordinance, 2002, as it was promulgated without consulting the people of forest areas.

In a press release issued here, office bearers of the society including Amir Muhammad, Sultan Raheem and Shabat Khan, said that the controversial ordinance would turn the forest department into a forest force with wide-ranging powers.

They said that the force would have the authority to keep sophisticated weapons, arrest a person without warrant or on suspicion, imposing hefty fines and recovering fines on the spot.

They added that all these powers were against the participatory approach, which, the government claimed, had adopted while drafting the law.

The society’s office bearers also expressed concern over the definition of forest concessionists, stating that the owners who enjoyed their rights over the forest areas for centuries should be treated as owners and not concessionists.

They said that the ordinance also lacked a mechanism for accountability of forest officers as in past the officials of Forest Development Corporation and Forest Department were involved in massive deforestation and were hand-in-gloves with the timber mafia.

They also proposed that complete ban should be imposed on selling timber on pre-fixed rates mechanism and instead the timber should be sold on the basis of net-sale. The society asked the government to implement the Ziauddin Khattak’s inquiry report and recover millions of rupees from forest contractors, which they had misappropriated on account of forest royalty.