Some farmlands within forest boundaries - Environment Minister

Chamikara WEERASINGHE

Environment and Natural Resources Minister Champika Ranawaka yesterday said, there is a problem of several traditional farmlands, people's houses and common places being inadvertently located within the forest boundaries demarcated by the Forest Conservation Department.

Ranawaka said, "This is not as MP Sajith Premadasa had recently put it, is affecting only those villagers who live in the Hambanthota district. In fact , the problem is discernible from other districts, such as Moneragala, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Trincomalee, Hambanthota, where the forests were under survey and demarcation by the Forest Conservation Department.

He said the demarcation process of forest boundaries was completed last year by the Forest Conservation Department after working on it for more than eight years under its Forest Resources Management Project, for it was a huge task.

"Although we took special care to exclude the traditional lands devoted to agriculture and stock-raising from being marked as forest, some areas were detected to have been located within the forest boundaries," he said.

He said, there are others who have come and settled in the forests during the time of the LTTE. "We are planing to introduce a program to help them..

We are also to identify the traditional farmers in these forest villages with the help of relevant local authorities," he said. We will give their lands if the cases are genuine because there are others who pose as traditional farmers to derive undue benefits, he pointed out.

Asked how the process of demarcation went wrong, Ranawaka said, "one can expect this when demarcating vast expanses of land such as forest."

The Environment and Natural Resources Ministry has demarcated the forest boundaries under its Forest Resources Management Project in keeping with the Forest Sector Master Plan (1995). The Government has received a credit of 25.2 million US dollars from the Asian Development Bank and spent US 10.9 million dollars from its own funds while Project beneficiaries have provided US 2.6 million dollars for the project.